"GOLD WINNER of the FOREWORD REVIEWS' 2015 INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award." Somewhere in an ancient stand of timber comes a request from an aging lumberjack. "I need me a will," Paul Bunyan informs his camp's scribe and bean-counter. "But a will ain't just a will, Johnny. It's a testament, too. What a man wants folks to remember 'bout hisself." And so it begins, the story of Paul's life resurrecting characters like Sourdough Sam and Shot Gunderson along with members of the Potawatomi and Ojibwe tribes whose dreams predict the legend of Bunyan and his blue-hided ox. The deep woods are redolent with beauty and mystery, but also peril. Paul is forced into a dreadful contest with Swede Sturleson, a timber baron emblematic of The Gilded Age. Paul will not emerge unscathed in the course of that long encounter. But something gets born in the interim, something akin to myth or hope, and in that place Paul Bunyan stands without exaggeration.
"What more is there to know about Paul Bunyan? Plenty, from the logging camps of the late 1800's to the start of mechanized tree harvesting--and the giant of a man who spanned it all. Darryl Wimberley's narrative is no mere tall tale but a full-fledged novel, with details so vivid, you can smell the wood shavings. Along the way are a band of colorful characters like Sourdough Sam and Shot Gunderson, and a bitter feud with a lumber magnate who wipes out (almost) anyone who crosses his path. "A logger's life is magnificent and obdurate and stark," Wimberley notes, but Paul's accom plishments are feats of true daring, and this account gets it all down on the page." - David Galef, author of My Date with Neanderthal Woman DARRYL WIMBERLEY has been recognized for both novels noir and literary work. A Tinker's Damn won the ForeWord Award for "Best Literary Novel" in 2001. The King of Colored Town was the first novel to garner the Willie Morris Award for Fiction in 2007. Darryl writes, works, and lives with his family in Austin.
"Darryl Wimberley's A Seeping Wound takes the reader into the lawless, violent realm of Florida's turpentine camps of the 1920s. Captain Henry Riggs oversees the Blue Turtle camp, a place where forced labor, prostitution and punishment in "the box" define the lives of anyone unlucky enough to end up there. Scott Hampton risks his life searching for his missing sister, Sarah, and her husband, Franklin Breaux, both held prisoner by the vicious Riggs. The fate of Hampton, the Breauxs, and others depends on the courage and daring of Martha LongFoot, a Muscogee woman who has herself spent most of her life as a slave in Riggs's camp. In this meticulously researched narrative, Wimberley offers us not only a detailed view of a portion of Florida history, but also a carefully drawn and credible set of characters such as Martha who bring this past to life." - Catherine Rainwater, Professor of English literature at St. Edward's University, Austin, Texas
Genre: Literary Fiction
"What more is there to know about Paul Bunyan? Plenty, from the logging camps of the late 1800's to the start of mechanized tree harvesting--and the giant of a man who spanned it all. Darryl Wimberley's narrative is no mere tall tale but a full-fledged novel, with details so vivid, you can smell the wood shavings. Along the way are a band of colorful characters like Sourdough Sam and Shot Gunderson, and a bitter feud with a lumber magnate who wipes out (almost) anyone who crosses his path. "A logger's life is magnificent and obdurate and stark," Wimberley notes, but Paul's accom plishments are feats of true daring, and this account gets it all down on the page." - David Galef, author of My Date with Neanderthal Woman DARRYL WIMBERLEY has been recognized for both novels noir and literary work. A Tinker's Damn won the ForeWord Award for "Best Literary Novel" in 2001. The King of Colored Town was the first novel to garner the Willie Morris Award for Fiction in 2007. Darryl writes, works, and lives with his family in Austin.
"Darryl Wimberley's A Seeping Wound takes the reader into the lawless, violent realm of Florida's turpentine camps of the 1920s. Captain Henry Riggs oversees the Blue Turtle camp, a place where forced labor, prostitution and punishment in "the box" define the lives of anyone unlucky enough to end up there. Scott Hampton risks his life searching for his missing sister, Sarah, and her husband, Franklin Breaux, both held prisoner by the vicious Riggs. The fate of Hampton, the Breauxs, and others depends on the courage and daring of Martha LongFoot, a Muscogee woman who has herself spent most of her life as a slave in Riggs's camp. In this meticulously researched narrative, Wimberley offers us not only a detailed view of a portion of Florida history, but also a carefully drawn and credible set of characters such as Martha who bring this past to life." - Catherine Rainwater, Professor of English literature at St. Edward's University, Austin, Texas
Genre: Literary Fiction
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