Poachers: Stories (2007)

by Tom Franklin

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343	13	76,431	(3.91)	14
In ten stunning and bleak tales set in the woodlands, swamps and chemical plants along the Alabama River, Tom Franklin stakes his claim as a fresh, original Southern voice. His lyric, deceptively simple prose conjures a world where the default setting is violence, a world of hunting and fishing, gambling and losing, drinking and poaching-a world most of us have never seen. In the chilling title novella (selected for the anthologies New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 1999 and Best Mystery Stories of the Century), three wild boys confront a mythic game warden as mysterious and deadly as the river they haunt. And, as a weathered, hand-painted sign reads: "Jesus is not coming." This terrain isn't pretty, isn't for the weak of heart, but in these deperate, lost people, Franklin somehow finds the moments of grace that make them what they so abundantly are: human.… (more)

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The stories in this book are incredibly well-written. The descriptions of rural southern living were heartbreaking and a little familiar, although uglier than anything I ever experienced myself. I found the women characters to be little more than props to all the men in these stories. The title story, poachers, read like a season of Fargo and would make a terrific thriller plot. (

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klnbennett | Oct 7, 2020 |

Someone told me the other day that William Gay had passed away. That momentary deflation I associate with the death of familiar artists left me pondering legacy and contemporaries. It would prove approapirate to assemble my own introspection. I always felt that Gay was improvising; he was an autodidact channeling a lifetime of fractured stories. Tom Franklin took the pitch as if he owned it. The stories here establish his talent as one for the ages. (

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jonfaith | Feb 22, 2019 |

Thank you, Rick, for recommending this book and subsequently letting me "not return it."

This is a great book of Southern short stories ... and it helps if you're from the South and know what Franklin's talking about. (

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DBrigandi | Jul 3, 2017 |

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DBrigandi | Jul 3, 2017 |

This is my 2nd Tom Franklin book and I am a believer. This collection of short stories was his first book. This is a dark book about life in Southwest Alabama populated by people who can sometimes be characterized by the term "white trash". Franklin delves into their lives and portrays a world that I know exists but does not touch mine on any level. He does a great job of making you feel the underbelly of life in the South or at least this part of the south. These stories are not happy and there is lots of violence but they will keep your interest. A very good first book and having read "Hell at the Breach" he certainly has developed into an excellent novelist. Someone to latch onto. (

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nivramkoorb | Feb 17, 2017 |

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2007

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Alabama, USA

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In ten stunning and bleak tales set in the woodlands, swamps and chemical plants along the Alabama River, Tom Franklin stakes his claim as a fresh, original Southern voice. His lyric, deceptively simple prose conjures a world where the default setting is violence, a world of hunting and fishing, gambling and losing, drinking and poaching-a world most of us have never seen. In the chilling title novella (selected for the anthologies New Stories from the South: The Year's Best, 1999 and Best Mystery Stories of the Century), three wild boys confront a mythic game warden as mysterious and deadly as the river they haunt. And, as a weathered, hand-painted sign reads: "Jesus is not coming." This terrain isn't pretty, isn't for the weak of heart, but in these deperate, lost people, Franklin somehow finds the moments of grace that make them what they so abundantly are: human.

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