Poachers: Stories

Tom Franklin (Author)

In ten stunning and bleak tales set in the woodlands, swamps and chemical plants along the Alabama River, Tom Franklin stakes his claim as a fresh, original Southern voice.His lyric, deceptively simple prose conjures a world where the default setting is violence, a world of hunting and fishing, gambling and losing, drinking and poaching-a world most of us have never seen. In the chilling title novella (selected for the anthologies New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 1999 and Best Mystery Stories of the Century), three wild boys confront a mythic game warden as mysterious and deadly as the river they haunt. And, as a weathered, hand-painted sign reads: "Jesus is not coming." This terrain isn't pretty, isn't for the weak of heart, but in these deperate, lost people, Franklin somehow finds the moments of grace that make them what they so abundantly are: human.

About the Author

Tom Franklin grew up in Dickinson, Alabama, a small, one-store town, where his parents formed The First Century, a church where speaking in tongues, faith-healings, and exorcisms were common. After moving to Mobile at eighteen, Tom earned both his B.A. and M.A. in English and Creative Writing from the University of South Alabama, where he currently teaches. In 1997, he earned his M.F.A. from the University of Arkansas. His fiction has appeared in numerous publications, including The Nebraska Review and Alabama Magazine. In 1998, Tom was awarded the Writers at Work Literary Nonfiction prize and an Arkansas Arts Council grant. He lives in Mobile, Alabama, with his wife, poet Beth Ann Fennelly.