Blackwood

If you're a fan of Southern or Rural Noir - James Lee Burke, Daniel Woodrell, Donald Ray Pollock, the literary children of Flannery O'Connor - you'll feel uncomfortably at home. I enjoyed Blackwood so much that I picked up Farris Smith's last two novels. Desperation Road, his gripping 2017 tale of outsiders and revenge in Mississippi, is high-quality, too. Better still is The Fighter (2018), a powerful and touching story about a punch-drunk bareknuckle boxer. Brutality and tenderness fight it out on every page. Though Farris Smith has five novels under his belt, he is little known in Britain. That ought to change: let some Mississippian mayhem, murder and misery into your lives -- Robbie Millen * The Times *
Smith is emerging as one of the great chroniclers of America's dispossessed. A haunting and utterly compelling read -- John Williams * Mail on Sunday *
A menacing taste of Southern Noir. Three strangers enter the small town of Red Blub, Mississippi and things start to get nasty and odd... -- Robbie Millen * The Times Best Books of 2020 *
Michael Farris Smith's outstanding new novel, Blackwood, makes a strong case for Mississippi to be considered the most disturbing state in America, if not the world * Strong Words *
In Smith's haunting, engrossing latest (after The Fighter), strangers awaken an evil force lurking in a small Southern town...Smith's meditation on the darkness of the human heart offers a moving update to the Southern gothic tradition. * Publishers Weekly *