Fastest Draw

FIFTH PLACE AMERICAN GEMS NOVEL CONTEST. Texas 1875, ten years after the Civil War has ended. Former Confederate states are still scarred with the ruins of burnt plantation houses, bitterness still fills the hearts of many and murderous intentions abound towards the agents of the federal government, the carpetbaggers and their Southern allies the scalawags. A young black man Abe Brown rides through Texas searching for his mother, separated from him during slavery, but he finds nothing but the end of a rope after being falsely accused of murder and horse theft. Abe escapes but decides to track down the man who drew his wanted poster Luke Sprague, a super-quick artist inspired by the grotesque caricatures of Harper's Weekly magazine. A broke Luke strikes a deal with Abe to help him to get to Washington D.C. where he has won a prize to draw a portrait of George Washington for the centenary silver dollar. But a straightforward journey becomes a peril-filled adventure. As they are pursued by bounty hunters and encounter seducers, robbers, fools, and agents of justice, whether appointed by man, God, or the Devil. As they travel through the West and the Deep South, with the promises of riches fading and threat of death ever looming, on their way northwards. Fastest Draw begins in Depression era Georgia with an old Abe recounting his adventure to a writer, it is both a Western and a Southern Gothic. The screenplay for Fastest Draw was recommended for the shortlist of the Dublin International film festival. "A joy to read, funny, original, vivid in its character, story and its sense of place and time." DIFF