About this item
Highlights
- "A superb and engrossing novel... Blake [is] one of the best and most original writers in America today.
- Author(s): James Carlos Blake
- 384 Pages
- Fiction + Literature Genres, Historical
Description
Book Synopsis
"A superb and engrossing novel... Blake [is] one of the best and most original writers in America today." -- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
James Carlos Blake is a masterful chronicler of the restless, outcast, the lawless, and the lonelyheart. With Red Grass River, 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.
From the Back Cover
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.
Review Quotes
"Ladies and gentlemen, the next Cormac McCarthy...Blake already stands among the best explorers of our lost frontier...The execution of his talent has grown with each book."--"Texas Monthly""Vivid...enthralling...well worth the read...This lively saga barrels along through years of mayhem and outlawry that rival anything found in the annals of the old West."--"San Antonio Express-News""No one writes about blood and guts better than James Carlos Blake. He knows in his bones that violence is at the heart of our American history. He respects that violence."--"Washington Post Book World""Blake is writing books that move like a stampede of mustangs with prose that ripples like Hemingway on steroids..."Red Grass River "is filled with the casual mayhem of the American fringe in an era when outlaws were heroes to those whose own wild spirits were crushed by the Great Depression. Blake is a unique chronicler of hard lives in harder times, and he gets better with each book he writes."--"Rocky Mountain News""A superb and engrossing novel...Blake [is] one of the best and most original writers in America today."--"Milwaukee Journal Sentinel"