Smonk

In 1911, the isolated town of Old Texas, tucked into southwestern Alabama, has been under siege by E. O. Smonk, a filthy and spiteful man who suffers from syphilis, tuberculosis, gout and a goiter. He is also skilled with explosives and blades, and he loathes horses, goats and the Irish. For a year, every Saturday night, he has ridden his mule into town to wreck property, kill livestock, seduce women, and cheat and beat the men, always hidden behind the twin barrels of his Winchester .45-70 over-and-under rifle. Eventually the townsfolk, who are hiding a dark secret of their own, drag Smonk into a trial, and its outcome is as disastrous as it is shocking.

The novel also follows Evavangeline, a fifteen-year-old prostitute who is as handy with a trigger as she is with a bottle cork. A case of mistaken identity sends her into the wild sugarcane country between the Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, where a drought has been the worst in a century and rabies runs through the animals. A posse of unlikely vigilantes pursues her. She travels upriver by boat, then picks her way on foot through dust and ruined crops, and along the way she must face a murky past of her own. Eventually she stumbles upon Old Texas, where she crosses paths with E. O. Smonk and the townspeople in a way she could never have imagined.

Smonk is by turns hilarious, violent, bawdy and frightening, and it refuses to fit any single mold. It reads as a southern tale rather than a western, and its cast includes corrupt judges, hired killers, a blacksmith who has been cuckolded, Christian deputies, widows, veterans of the war, prostitutes, witches, madmen and zombies. By the end, the book's central mystery is uncovered and the survivors have been changed for good.