In this classic country noir, featuring a new introduction by
Daniel Woodrell, a small town farmer takes a job at a roadhouse,
where unbridled greed leads to a brutal murder Jack McDonald is
barely a farmer. Boll weevils have devoured his cotton crop, his
chickens have stopped laying eggs, and everything he owns is
mortgaged-even his cow. He has no money, no prospects, and nothing
to do but hang around filling stations, wondering where his next
drink will come from. As far as hooch goes, there's no place like
Smut Milligan's, where Breath of Spring moonshine sells for a
dollar a pint. A bootlegger with an entrepreneurial spirit,
Milligan has plans to open a roadhouse, and he asks Jack to run the
till. The music will be hot, the liquor cheap, and the clientele
rough. But the only thing stronger than Milligan's hooch is his
greed, and Jack is slowly drawn into the middle of Smut's
dalliances with a married woman, the machinations of corrupt town
officials-and a savage act of murder. "A sleazy, corrupt but
completely believable story of a North Carolina town." -Raymond
Chandler "A very fine book." -Flannery O'Connor " Ross] showed us
that a writer can come out of the red-clay gulches of rural North
Carolina during the Depression-that is, a writer can come out of
absolutely anywhere at any time-and make high art without resorting
to tricks, stylish ennui or pointless savagery." -The Millions
"Ross writes in classically laconic, wised-up American prose. His
voice suits then and now and will still carry well tomorrow."
-Daniel Woodrell "As far as I'm concerned, this book is where dark
Southern fiction began, and any writer who works in the field owes
Ross a debt of gratitude, whether he or she has read They Don't
Dance Much or not." -William Gay "In and out of print since it was
first published in 1940, this blistering novel about a rural
Carolina roadhouse with a dance floor is packed with enough
desperate characters to make murder merely inevitable, but no less
horrifying." -Newsweek James Ross (1911-1990) was born in North
Carolina, where he worked as a reporter for the Daily News
(Greensboro) for many years. He wrote his first and only novel,
They Don't Dance Much, in 1940. The book, considered "country
noir," was praised by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Flannery
O'Connor. During the decade that followed, Ross published several
short stories in literary journals such as Partisan Review, the
Sewanee Review, Collier's, and Argosy while he worked on another
novel, In The Red, which was never published.
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