Hell at the Breech: A Novel

In 1897, an aspiring politician is mysteriously murdered in the rural area of Alabama known as Mitcham Beat. His outraged friends -- —mostly poor cotton farmers -- form a secret society, Hell-at-the-Breech, to punish the townspeople they believe responsible. The hooded members wage a bloody year-long campaign of terror that culminates in a massacre where the innocent suffer alongside the guilty. Caught in the maelstrom of the Mitcham war are four people: the aging sheriff sympathetic to both sides; the widowed midwife who delivered nearly every member of Hell-at-the-Breech; a ruthless detective who wages his own war against the gang; and a young store clerk who harbors a terrible secret.

Based on incidents that occurred a few miles from the author's childhood home, Hell at the Breech chronicles the events of dark days that led the people involved to discover their capacity for good, evil, or for both.

Customer Reviews:

Evocative Prose and Historical Details Abound

By Bookreporter - June 21, 2003

In his highly praised short story collection, POACHERS, Alabama native Tom Franklin mined a neglected topic --- the modern South --- for narrative gold. He created vivid, visceral stories of present-day losers and rabble-rousers, and presented them as both regular frustrated humans and red-dirt legends.Although his follow-up novel, HELL AT THE BREECH, is set more than 100 years in the past, Franklin's sensibility for gritty Southern realism remains in tact and in fact has become one of his defining traits as a regional author. Much like its predecessor, HELL AT THE BREECH refuses to romanticize the South, its inhabitants, or the violence they perpetrate, yet Franklin holds up his male characters as examples and exemplars of various strains of Southern masculinity, examining the morality of bloodshed in all its muscular complexity.So many things work so well in this novel about a real-life gang war in rural Alabama that it's difficult to know which to praise first or foremost... read more

A Gripping Tale of Men Pushed to the Limit

By J. Mullin - July 25, 2003

Like many of the reviewers here, I was very impressed with Franklin's story collection Poachers, and especially the novella by the same name which dominated that award-winning collection. Franklin's lean style, and his obvious familiarity with the rural Alabama landscapes he portrays, remind me a little of William Gay's equally-fascinating depictions of rural Tennessee. When I saw that Franklin had a novel coming out based upon a real-life conflict set during late 19th-century Alabama, I couldn't wait to get my hands on it. Hell at the Breech did not disappoint.The novel takes its time setting the scene, and giving the reader a true sense of Mitcham's Beat, a tiny slice of rural Alabama where poor farmers have too much work to do to stop and grieve over something like a dead spouse. Two teenage brothers, Mack and William Burke, sneak out for a night on the town and during a botched robbery, a man is accidentally killed. The victim, Arch Bedsole, is a shop-owner and local... read more

Brutal, Uncompromising and Brilliant

By Brett Benner - November 18, 2004

This book had been sitting on my bookshelf for over a year since the New York Times had placed it on their year end best of literature list.Finally getting around to reading it, it completely blew me away.Set in rural Alabama in 1897,an aspiring politician is murdered,and his friends form a secret group, Hell at the Breech,to exact revenge on the townpeople they feel were behind it. It's rough, very violent,and deftly captures the feel and time of a place so specifically you can almost feel the cold and smell the woodsap. A brilliant meditation on the evil and good that lies in every mans heart. Highly recommended.

AVAILABILITY
Merchant	Format	Price
Amazon US	Paperback	$0.01 - $14.99
eBooks.com	Digital (PDF)	$10.99
BookByte	Paperback	$9.71
eCampus	Paperback	~~$10.10~~ discount!