A Hanging at Cinder Bottom by Glenn Taylor
- Sale Date
- ISBN
- 9781941040102
- Page Count
- 400
- Language
- English
- Imprint
- Tin House
Meet the Author
Glenn Taylor
Stylish historical fiction in the tradition of True Grit and Carter Beats the Devil, A Hanging at Cinder Bottom is an epic novel of exile and retribution, a heist tale and a love story both.
The year is 1910. Halley’s Comet has just signaled the end of the world, and Jack Johnson has knocked out the “Great White Hope,” Jim Jeffries. Keystone, West Virginia, is the region’s biggest boomtown, and on a rainy Sunday morning in August, its townspeople are gathered in a red-light district known as Cinder Bottom to witness the first public hanging in over a decade. Abe Baach and Goldie Toothman are at the gallows, awaiting their execution. He’s Keystone’s most famous poker player; she’s the madam of its most infamous brothel. Abe split town seven years prior under suspicion of armed robbery and murder, and has been playing cards up and down the coast, hustling under a variety of pseudonyms, ever since. But when he returns to Keystone to reunite with Goldie and to set the past right, he finds a brother dead and his father’s saloon in shambles—and suspects the same men might be responsible for both. Only then, in facing his family’s past, does the real swindle begin.
Glenn Taylor, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, has a unique voice that breathes life into history and a prose style that snaps with lyricism and comedy.
The year is 1910. Halley’s Comet has just signaled the end of the world, and Jack Johnson has knocked out the “Great White Hope,” Jim Jeffries. Keystone, West Virginia, is the region’s biggest boomtown, and on a rainy Sunday morning in August, its townspeople are gathered in a red-light district known as Cinder Bottom to witness the first public hanging in over a decade. Abe Baach and Goldie Toothman are at the gallows, awaiting their execution. He’s Keystone’s most famous poker player; she’s the madam of its most infamous brothel. Abe split town seven years prior under suspicion of armed robbery and murder, and has been playing cards up and down the coast, hustling under a variety of pseudonyms, ever since. But when he returns to Keystone to reunite with Goldie and to set the past right, he finds a brother dead and his father’s saloon in shambles—and suspects the same men might be responsible for both. Only then, in facing his family’s past, does the real swindle begin.
Glenn Taylor, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, has a unique voice that breathes life into history and a prose style that snaps with lyricism and comedy.
Praise for A Hanging at Cinder Bottom
-
“Public hangings, outlaws, and brothels figure into Taylor's lyrical, funny story.”
Entertainment Weekly, Top Pick in Paperback -
“Much of [A Hanging at Cinder Bottom] is devoted to one long con, and this has its pleasures--a sort of Appalachian 'Ocean's Eleven'--but...what makes [Cinder Bottom] a bone-through, can't-quit-you craving is Taylor's preternatural gift for language.”
New York Times Book Review -
“As complex (and frail) as . . . an Elmore Leonard novel. . . This ingeniously structured novel is a lot of fun — if you like card tricks and whiskey and the story of people with nothing who are trying to pull off a big one.”
Los Angeles Times
About the Imprint
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