The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart - by Glenn Taylor (Paperback)

From the Back Cover

Meet Trenchmouth Taggart, a man born and orphaned in 1903, a man nicknamed for his lifelong oral affliction. His boyhood is shaped by the Widow Dorsett, a strong mountain woman who teaches him to hunt and to survive the taunts of others. In the hills of southern West Virginia, a boy grows up fast. Trenchmouth sips moonshine, handles snakes, pleases women, and masters the rifle--a skill that lands him in the middle of the West Virginia coal wars. A teenaged union sniper, Trenchmouth is exiled to the back-woods of Appalachia's foothills, where he spends his years running from the past. But trouble will sniff a man down, and an outlaw will eventually run home. Here Trenchmouth Taggart's story, like the best ballads, etches its mark deep upon the memory.

Review Quotes

"Not many young writers are willing to allow a cottonmouth, slow and methodical, to climb up his arm and shoulder and neck and, opening his mouth, let its killer little head bump around inside for a look--even in their fiction. Full of wonder and belief, Glenn Taylor has fearless ambition and dangerous talent. He is, like this, his first book, out to make some big claims on your attention." - Dagoberto Gile, author of Woodcuts of Women and The Flowers
"I was hooked immediately by the narrative voice, which I would describe as utterly kickass, take-no-prisoners in tone. The combination of hyperbole & hilarity throughout is what I would call High Hillbilly in the purest form." - Chuck Kinder, Author of Snakehunter and Last Mountain Dancer
"Part Rip Van Winkle, part Professor Seagull, part O Brother, Where Art Thou?, part Matewan, The Ballard of Trenchmouth Taggart is picaresque, legendary, epic, and outrageous, and in spite of all that, I can't help but wonder if maybe it isn't also more than just a little bit true. And with a narrative voice so confident, so compelling, so arresting and pure, the conclusion I came to is that Glenn Taylor must have channeled the whole damn thing." - Sara Pritchard, Author of LATELY and CRACKPOTS
"Taylor's prose is so fluid and seemingly effortless that The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart bridges the usually irreconcilable gap between popular fiction and literary fiction. It's that rare creature--a literary page-turner--and it will please both the casual reader and the college professor. . . . The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart is a stunning, fully realized, unique and ambitious book that proves there's still passion, fire and brilliance in the American novel." - Eric Miles Williamson, The Houston Chronicle
"A stunning, fully realized, unique and ambitious book that proves there's still passion, fire and brilliance in the American novel." - Houston Chronicle