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Hell at the Breech
Hell at the Breech
Hell at the Breech
Audiobook13 hours

Hell at the Breech

Written by Tom Franklin

Narrated by Larry Pine

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

()

About this audiobook

This immensely accomplished novel by the author of the Edgar Award-winning short story collection Poachers is based on a real-life feud in the 1890s that pitted the underclass-poor, mostly white sharecroppers -of Clarke County, Ala., against the land-owning gentry who could and did control their fate. "Franklin may have used history as a starting point, but he imagines the events in human terms, creating a book that transmutes historical fact into something much more powerful, dramatic and compelling."-Publishers Weekly, starred review
LanguageEnglish
Release dateDec 12, 2008
ISBN9781436142809
Hell at the Breech
Author

Tom Franklin

Tom Franklin is the New York Times bestselling author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Crime Writers' Association's Gold Dagger Award. His previous works include Poachers, Hell at the Breech, and Smonk. He teaches in the University of Mississippi's MFA program.

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Reviews for Hell at the Breech

Rating: 4.125 out of 5 stars
4/5

8 ratings4 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Have to give this one 5 stars. It was like living in the late 1800's, plenty rough. Really put me there while reading. A thoroughly enjoyable read.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Some fairly interesting set pieces and characters, but flat, predictable, and poorly paced, with the end collapsing in a tired heap. 2.5 stars.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a historical fiction about a real life gang called Hell at the Breech that declared war on the nearby towns of Grove Hill and Coffeeville in 1890s Alabama. This took place during a time when the merchants in the towns kept the poor farmers in perpetual debt, and anger over their situation led in part to the war between the two. There are as many questions as there are answers as to what really happened, and Tom Franklin's fictional portrayal imagines the truth behind the events.Franklin does a very good job of bringing to life the violence and humanity of these characters. The reader comes to love them, fear them, and loathe them over the course of the story. This is a strength of his that is evidenced both in Hell at the Breach and in his subsequent novel Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. The characters in Hell at the Breach are each individuals motivated by a variety of things including financial interests, self-preservation, revenge, justice, and plain-old meanness. The complexities of these characters make for a very exciting reading experience in which the reader genuinely cares who lives and who dies by the end of the story.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Gritty, enaging story about a group of vigilantes in a dirt poor section of rural Alabama in the 1890s. Main character is an ageing sheriff. Very well written.