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Summary
Summary
Now a major motion picture and titled for the screen as RUMBLE THROUGH THE DARK; a blistering tale of violence and deliverance set against the mythic backdrop of the Mississippi Delta.
The acres and acres of fertile soil, the two-hundred-year-old antebellum house, all gone. And so is the woman who gave it to Jack, the foster mother only days away from dying, her mind eroded by dementia, the family legacy she entrusted to Jack now owned by banks and strangers.
And Jack's mind has begun to fail, too. The decades of bare-knuckle fighting are now taking their toll, as concussion after concussion forces him to carry around a stash of illegal painkillers and a notebook of names that separates friend from foe. But in a single twisted night, Jack loses his chance to win it all back. Hijacked by a sleazy gambler out to settle a score, Jack is robbed of the money that will clear his debt with Big Momma Sweet -- the queen of Delta vice, whose deep backwoods playground offers sin to all those willing to pay -- and open a path that could lead him back home. Yet this sudden reversal of fortunes introduces an unlikely savior in the form of a sultry, tattooed carnival worker.
Guided by what she calls her "church of coincidence," Annette pushes Jack toward redemption, only to discover that the world of Big Momma Sweet is filled with savage danger. Damaged by regret, crippled by twenty-five years of fists and elbows, heartbroken by his own betrayals, Jack is forced to step into the fighting pit one last time, the stakes nothing less than life or death. With the raw power and poetry of a young Larry Brown and the mysticism of Cormac McCarthy, Michael Farris Smith cements his place as one of the finest writers in the American literary landscape.
Author Notes
Michael Farris Smith is the author of The Fighter , Desperation Road , Rivers , and The Hands of Strangers . His novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire , Southern Living , Book Riot , and numerous others, and have been named Indie Next List, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of the Month selections. He has been a finalist for the Southern Book Prize, the Gold Dagger Award in the UK, and the Grand Prix des Lectrices in France, and his essays have appeared with The New York Times , Bitter Southerner , Writer's Bone , and more. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and two daughters.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
The ferocious fourth novel by the author of Desperation Road confines itself to a few fraught days in the life of a cage fighter on his last legs. Forty-something Jack Boucher, raised by a foster mother in the Mississippi Delta, has reached a crisis point. Subsisting on pain pills washed down with Wild Turkey, he has lost large chunks of his memory, but he knows that his beloved foster mom is dying in a nursing home and that he is on the edge of being killed by loan shark Big Momma Sweet if he doesn't either hand over some cash or take on one last, potentially fatal fight. After a car crash on a back road, Jack's destiny becomes entwined with that of a troupe of outlaw carnies, among them the thoughtful, tattooed Annette, who can't "decide if she was putting together pieces to some fateful puzzle or if she had simply fallen into this man's mess because of her own need." Vivid descriptions never slow the pace of the plot, which moves swiftly toward an inevitable but still surprising climax. As violent as it is poetic, Smith's novel draws the reader in from beginning to end. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
This resourceful writer weds violence, despair, and glimmers of hope during a few tense days in the life of a once-legendary bare-knuckle fighter.In a brief prologue, Jack Boucher is abandoned at age 2 and bounces around foster homes before an unmarried woman named Maryann takes him in at age 12. As the main story opens, Jack is 50 and facing nothing but trouble. The bank is about to repossess Maryann's house, and a vicious bookie has sent collectors to squeeze him for gambling debts. It gets worse. After winning $12,000 at a casino, Jack crashes his truck and wanders off in a daze, forgetting the money. The cash then slips into a subplot about a traveling carnival with ex-con roustabouts and a tattooed beauty named Annette. She and the carnie boss find the money, but there are complications, not least her possible ties to Jack. In flashbacks, Smith (Desperation Road, 2017, etc.) reveals the loving bonds Jack forms with Maryann and the thrill he discovers in the bare-knuckle cage, where he soon becomes a star in a bloody demimonde. But too many blows to the head leave him in constant pain and addicted to pills and booze that also cost him his edge in the cagean edge he may need one last time. Smith could be nodding to the classical unities of place and time, with his three-day plot centered on Clarksdale, Mississippi. Other unifying factors are hard-edged, like the brass knuckles that appear four times in nearly 200 pages, or quasi-mystical, like a hawk that marks both Jack and Annette. These elements are subtly handled, but Smith shows less restraint by letting Jack's pondering of his physical and psychological pain become a litany.A gifted storyteller who parses battered dreams and the legacies of abandonment with a harsh realism that is both saddening and engaging. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Like so many noir heroes, Jack Boucher finds himself forced to take on that archetypal one last job. In 50-year-old, pill-addicted Jack's case, the job is a fight, a return to the cage where, in his youth, he was a bare-knuckle legend. But now Jack owes $12,000 to Big Momma Sweet, who runs the no-holds-barred brawls, along with every other kind of vice in the Mississippi Delta. A good run at the tables had put the money in Jack's pocket, and he was on his way to pay his debt when he ran afoul of the wrong guy and wound up in a ditch with no money and a wrecked truck. So it's back to the cage for Jack, who knows only too well that one more fight is almost certain to be one too many for a man who has already absorbed more than his limit of blows to the head. We've been down this road many times, notably in Brad Smith's One-Eyed Jacks (2000), also about a fighter with a blood vessel ready to burst, but Smith throws in a tantalizing wrinkle by having a carnival boss and his featured attraction, tattooed-lady Annette both with existential crises of their own stumble on the money. We know their falling stars will eventually cross with Jack's, but we don't know how. This crisply written tale of thwarted lives and rawboned courage will sit comfortably alongside the similarly hardscrabble work of Daniel Woodrell and Chris Offutt.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2018 Booklist
Library Journal Review
As a newborn, Jack Boucher was dumped into the foster care system; at the age of 12, he met Maryann, who raised him in a 200-year-old antebellum house in the Mississippi Delta. But when Jack turned 18, he moved out so he could box professionally-against his foster mother's advice. Twenty five years later, Jack is damaged by too many concussions from bare-knuckle fighting and is in debt to the queen of Delta vice, Big Momma Sweet. To cope with the many concussions, he takes illegal painkillers. One night when he is about to pay off his debt to Big Momma Sweet, he crashes his car and the money he owes her is stolen by an unlikely savior, Annette, from the "church of coincidence." Annette attempts to redeem Jack, but Jack must fight one last fight to save Maryann's ancestral home. VERDICT Recipient of the 2014 Mississippi Author Award, Smith (Desperation Road) excels in this dark and violent Southern grit-lit thriller. Fans of James Lee Burke will delight in the strong sense of place in the Deep South, while fans of David Joy will appreciate the protagonist's inner turmoil.-Russell Michalak, Goldey-Beacom Coll. Lib., Wilmington, DE © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
