The Fighter

Critically-acclaimed novelist Michael Farris Smith, "one of the best writers of his generation" (Tom Franklin), delivers again with The Fighter, a powerful and resonant novel of violence and tenderness, the past and the present, and the impact of the unexpected, set against the mythic backdrop of the Mississippi Delta.The acres and acres of fertile soil, the two-hundred year old antebellum house, all gone. And so is the woman who gave it to Jack, the foster mother who now rests in hospice care, the family legacy she entrusted to Jack now owned by banks and strangers. And Jack's mind has begun to fail, too, as concussion after concussion forces him to carry around a notebook of names that separate friend from foe and remind him of dangerous haunts to avoid.But in a single twisted night he is derailed. Hijacked by a no-good harmonica player out to settle a score, Jack loses the money that will clear his debt with Big Momma Sweet, the queen of Delta vice, whose...