Red Grass River: A Legend - Softcover

Blake, James Carlos

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380792427 ISBN 13: 9780380792429

Publisher: Harper Perennial, 2000

Synopsis

James Carlos Blake is a masterful chronicler of the restless, outcast, the lawless, and the lonelyheart. His previous novel, In the Rogue Blood, was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction. Now he has written a powerful and rousing historical saga of family loyalties, blood feuds, and betrayed friendships; of bank robberies and bootlegging; and of a passionate love as wild at heart as the Everglades. It is the story of sworn enemies: John Ashley, a criminal and folk hero, the brightest star in a family destined to become the most notorious in south Florida; and Bobby Baker, a lawman born of lawmen, a violent, hard-hearted man driven by the searing memory of past affronts and the enduring hatreds the engendered. Ashley and Maker will clash many times over many decades. And as the twentieth century encroaches on their world—and the wildlands give grudging way to the rising boomtown of Miami—a feral, sensual mating will place one man in gravest peril...while his adversary contrives a dark, personal vengeance that could leave countless lives—his own included—in ruin.

About this title

About the Author

James Carlos Blake is the author of nine novels. Among his literary honors are the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Southwest Book Award, Quarterly West Novella Prize, and Chautauqua South Book Award. He lives in Arizona.

From Kirkus Reviews

Prohibition, bloodshed, rum-running, and gang wars by a master of historical detail and thunderous storytelling (In the Rogue Blood, 1997, etc.). The razor-edged sawgrass of the Everglades makes a wonderful setting for Blake as his hero, young John Ashley, soon to become a legendary bootlegger and killer, duly takes care of business. Young Ashley poles into the swamp to deliver homemade hooch to DeSoto Tiger, an Indian buddy, when drunken, bowler-hatted DeSoto draws his knife and gets shot thrice by the lad. Eventually, Johns arrested by his nemesis, Sheriff Bobby Baker (the two became rivals long before, when John seduced Bobbys girl)but he manages to escape. John disappears for two years, becoming a bouncer in a New Orleans whorehouse, then resurfaces, walking into Sheriff Baker's office with his father and a lawyer. Bobby taunts John that he'll hang, but John again wiggles loose. Prohibition arrives; the moonshine business blooms. John's arrested again during a bank robbery; Bobby Baker thumbs out one of his eyes; brown-eyed John, sporting one blue glass eye, escapes from a road gang, goes back to bank-robbingand comes up against the Chicago mob that tries to muscle in on his Florida territory. He also finds himself caught between his ever-loving young blind whore, Loretta May, and swamp-girl Laura Upthegrove. John is captured yet again, and yet again escapes lockup, this time with his Ashley Gang. Now Bobby Baker's feeling truly vengeful . . . . Sex and drawlin' dialogue that don't give a damn about real English, along with big whiffs of piney-fresh description, gusts of gunfire, and howling action like a night in a cathouse during a hurricane. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0380792427
• ISBN 13: 9780380792429
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384