Red Grass River

from the chain and gave it to her. She cupped it in her hand and smiled on it through her tears.

And then closed her hand tightly around it and lashed the fish into Bob Baker’s mouth with all her weight behind it.

The punch snapped his head back and he felt a top tooth give and before he could recover she was out of the car and running hatless into the ghostly twilit rain and he saw her vanish into the pines.

An hour later the world was gone dark and the rain was falling hard again. The windows of Bob Baker’s house showed warmly yellow and his wife and daughters were within and waiting for him to come home.

And all the while he yet sat in the car and stared into the rainy blackness as though he might descry some wild thing lying in wait, watching him and grinning at the hard beating of his heart.

About the Author

JAMES CARLOS BLAKE has written seven books of fiction, including In the Rogue Blood (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), Red Grass River (winner of the Chautauqua South Book Award), Borderlands (winner of the Southwest Book Award), and the critically acclaimed Wildwood Boys. He is also the author of The Pistoleer and The Friends of Pancho Villa. He resides in southeast Arizona.

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MORE PRAISE FOR JAMES CARLOS BLAKE’S

Red Grass River

“Once in a while a novel comes along that is so entertaining, so smart, and so expertly crafted that, when you’re done reading it, you want to holler, ‘Hot damn’ and read that novel all over again. Red Grass River is exactly such a novel…. Blake’s prose, a coarse and gritty and seamless poetry that fistfights and breaks the law and takes no prisoners, is the very music of the swamps.”

—Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Evoking the primal extravagance of the vanished south Florida wilderness, L.A. Times Book Prize winner Blake offers up a spell-binding tale…. Family loyalties, feral mysticism, and the inexorable erosion of a way of life are grandly imagined in this vivid saga of a freewheeling past.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Riveting…swift-moving…. Blake paints a setting of subtle beauty…. But the Everglades also turns red in this story from the blood spilled into it.”

—Austin American-Statesman

“Plain good fun…. Blake perfectly captures the language and attitude of the independent, cocksure wilderness families. John Ashley is a well-drawn, colorful protagonist.”

—Cleveland Plain Dealer

“A saga of the seedier side of the early pioneers in Florida…. Colorful and entertaining. The novel is gritty, rustic, and raw…. The tone is brisk and literary.”

—Tampa Tribune

“A Prohibition-era tale that rivals the legends of John Dillinger and Clyde Barrow for bravado and daring…a wonderful tale of outlaw heroics and the growth of south Florida from swamp into vacation mecca—too good to be missed.”

—Library Journal (starred review)