"I always wanted to be a cowboy, but closest I could come to that boyhood dream was reading Westerns. And I've read quite a few -- from Zane Grey to Max Brand to Louis L'Amour. Now I have to add Mark Ryno to my list of favorites." - H. L. Osterman, editor of Zane Grey's Two-Gun Tales Follow Sheriff Fred Henry as he leaves the Hollow and hunts down the meanest criminal in history, George Peele. Henry is a smart man who has been sheriff for many years, but never has there been a man like Peele. The sheriff feels confident he can find and capture Peele before he hurts anyone else, but he's met with plenty of obstacles along the way, not to mention George Peele's murderous streak that the sheriff must avenge.
Late one night at the end of a scorching summer, a phone call rouses Sheriff Furman Chambers out of bed. Two men have been shot dead on Highway 9 in front of the Hillside Inn, a one-time boardinghouse that is now just a front for Larthan Tull's liquor business. When Sheriff Chambers arrives to investigate, witnesses say a man named Mary Jane Hopewell walked into the tavern, dragged two of Tull's runners into the street, and laid them out with a shotgun. Sheriff Chambers's investigation leads him into the Bell village, where Mary Jane's family lives a quiet, hardscrabble life of working in the cotton mill. While the weary sheriff digs into the mystery and confronts the county's underground liquor operation, the whiskey baron himself is looking for vengeance. Mary Jane has gotten in the way of his business, and you don't do that to Larthan Tull and get away with it. Hailed as a "grand new talent" (Bret Lott) and a "significant new voice in Southern fiction" (Ron Rash), Jon Sealy has written a haunting debut novel. With its unforgettable characters and evocative setting, The Whiskey Baron is a gripping drama about family ties and bad choices, about the folly of power and the limitations of the law.
Making moonshine, working blue-collar jobs, picking fights in bars, chasing women, and living hardscrabble lives . . . Clayton and Saford Hall were born in the backwoods of Virginia in 1919, in a place known as The Hollow. Incredibly, they became legends in their day, rising from mountain-bred poverty to pickin’ and yodelin’ all over the airwaves of the South in the 1930s and 1940s, opening shows for the Carter Family, Roy Rogers, the Sons of the Pioneers, and even playing the most coveted stage of all: the Grand Ole Opry. They accomplished a lifetime’s worth of achievements in less than five years—and left behind only a few records to document their existence. Fortunately, Ralph Berrier, Jr., the grandson of Clayton Hall and a reporter for the Roanoke Times, brings us their full story for the first time in IF TROUBLE DON'T KILL ME. He documents how the twins’ music spread like wildfire when they moved from The Hollow to Roanoke at age twenty, and how their popularity was inflamed by their onstage zaniness, their roguish offstage shenanigans, and, above all, their ability to play old-time country music. But just as they arrived on the brink of major fame, World War II dashed their dreams. Berrier follows the Hall twins as they travel overseas, leaving behind their beloved music, and are thrust into the cauldron of a war that reshaped their lives and destinies. Through the brothers’ experiences, the story of World War II unfolds—Saford fought from the shores of North Africa to Sicily and Europe and finally into Germany; Clayton fought the Japanese in the brutal Pacific theater until the savage, final battle on Okinawa. They returned home after the war to find that the world had changed, music had changed . . . and they had, too. IF TROUBLE DON'T KILL ME paints a loving portrait of a vanishing yet exalted southern culture, shows us the devastating consequences of war, and allows us to experience the mountain voices that not only influenced the history of music but that also shaped the landscape of America.
A story about life's challenges on the home front during WWII. The setting is Pleasant Pines, Tennessee, a small ridge community. The leading character is a philosophic gravedigger and deputy, Zack Hayes. For two years, mysterious deaths have plagued the ridge. Bootleggers cast murder and mayhem into the frustrating mix of wartime shortages and disorder. The number of service banners continue to grow and residents turn to their radios for war news and the spirited strains of big band music. Daily rhetoric and idle gossip by loafers; and men too old for the draft, provide a comfort zone around the ornate stove in Frierson's Store. The end result of inbreeding is discovered when the law battles the Shelton hollow bootleggers. Federal agents arrive to investigate the possibility of enemy spies in the area. A tragic death leaves the grocer single and looking for a wife. A cobalt blue bottle becomes a major clue in the murders. Zack and the undertaker become fast friends during a death call experience in a snowstorm. There's a surprising conclusion to the murders and the place to share good news is Frierson's Store with men too old for the draft.
The first-ever biography of the man who created America's most famous whiskey Born in Lynchburg, Tennessee, in 1850, Jack Daniel became a legendary moonshiner at age 15 before launching a legitimate distillery ten years later. By the time he died in 1911, he was an American legend-and his Old No. 7 Tennessee sipping whiskey was an international sensation, the winner of gold medals at the St. Louis World's Fair and the Liege International Exposition in Belgium. Blood and Whiskey captures Daniel's indomitable rise in the rough-edged world of the nineteenth-century whiskey trade-and shows how his commitment to quality (his whiskey was always charcoal-filtered) and his flair for marketing and packaging (he launched his distinctive square bottle in 189-5) helped create one of America's most venerable and recognizable brands.
