There is another one, Stories from the Blue Moon Cafe. And we have New Stories from the South it's the only regional anthology that I know of. RB: Do people look at you as a Southern writer? Are you practicing Southern writing? I, of course, lived in more places than just the South. To explain its alleged racist tendencies. TF: Yeah, and I am often called upon to speak for the South. RB: When you come across the Mason-Dixon line given that you live in Oxford, Mississippi what's it like for you? Are you identified as a Southerner? And I realized it was wonderful and terrifying stuff. He said, "Let him find a barn with fertilizer" and began describing this to me. Buford began describing how you make a fertilizer bomb. How might he fight against the game warden? He has no gun. I called Buford and asked him what might happen. When I did the long story Poachers in my first book, I needed to know what would happen-I had a game warden chasing a guy in the woods and I was stuck. One of his big ambitions is to get on at the chemical plant. TF: I think he works construction and doesn't really have a job per se that I know of. I call him for details in stories occasionally. RB: Is your friend an exception or typical? TF: He's infuriated by my wife and I having different last names. He's going to quit because it's getting too liberal for him. He's in the CSA, Confederate Sons of America. He said a wonderful line to me, fairly recently. It's like a terrible trick that his parents played on him. I have a friend in Alabama who is a wonderful guy. Robert Birnbaum: Is the Mason-Dixon Line an anachronism? Sheriff Billy Waite steps in to fight this menacing outbreak of violence. This group of criminals and powerless poor white tenant farmers terrorizes Clarke County, murdering and intimidating its law-abiding citizens. "Tooch" Bedsole, his cousin, uses this killing as a pretext to form the Hell at the Breech gang. The story begins when young Macy Burke, a poor white teenage orphan, accidentally shoots a local merchant, Arch Bedsole.
Hell at the Breech is based on real events that took place in the 1890's that pitted poor white sharecroppers against the landowners who controlled their fates. Tom Franklin has received a number of fellowships and is currently at the University of Mississippi at Oxford, where he lives with his family. His stories have been included in Best American Mystery Stories of the Century, New Stories from The South, 1999 and Stories from the Blue Moon Café. He has been published in The Black Warrior Review, The Southern Review, and The Oxford American, among others. His first book was a highly regarded short story collection, Poachers. He was educated at the University of South Alabama and the University of Arkansas. Author Tom Franklin was raised in rural southwest Alabama (Clarke County), a dozen miles from the setting of his new novel, Hell at the Breech.
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