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Critics' Opinion:
Readers' Opinion:
First Published:
Jul 2015, 304 pages
Paperback:
Jun 2016, 320 pages
Book Reviewed by:
Kim Kovacs
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Winner of the 2015 BookBrowse Debut Author Award
From a remarkable new voice in Southern fiction, a multigenerational saga of crime, family, and vengeance.
Clayton Burroughs comes from a long line of outlaws. For generations, the Burroughs clan has made its home on Bull Mountain in North Georgia, running shine, pot, and meth over six state lines, virtually untouched by the rule of law. To distance himself from his family's criminal empire, Clayton took the job of sheriff in a neighboring community to keep what peace he can. But when a federal agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms shows up at Clayton's office with a plan to shut down the mountain, his hidden agenda will pit brother against brother, test loyalties, and could lead Clayton down a path to self-destruction.
In a sweeping narrative spanning decades and told from alternating points of view, the novel brilliantly evokes the atmosphere of the mountain and its inhabitants: forbidding, loyal, gritty, and ruthless. A story of family - the lengths men will go to protect it, honor it, or in some cases destroy it - Bull Mountain is an incredibly assured debut that heralds a major new talent in fiction.
1.
"Family," the old man said to no one.
The word hung in a puff of frozen breath, before dissipating into the early morning fog. Riley Burroughs used that word the same way a master carpenter used a hammer. Sometimes he just gave it a gentle tap to nudge one of his kin toward his way of thinking, but sometimes he used it with all the subtlety of a nine-pound sledge.
The old man sat in a wooden rocker, slowly squeaking it back and forth on the worn and buckled pine slats of the cabin's front porch. The cabin was one of several hunting shelters his family had built all over Bull Mountain throughout the years. Rye's Grandfather, Johnson Burroughs, built this one. Rye imagined the elder statesman of the Burroughs clan sitting in that very spot fifty years earlier and wondered if his brow ever got this heavy. He was sure it did.
Rye pulled a pouch of dried tobacco from his coat and rolled a smoke in his lap. Ever since he was a boy, he'd come out here to watch Johnson&#...
BookBrowse Awards
2015
The biggest challenge I had with the book was that the time period changed from chapter to chapter, which made it difficult to follow at times. Bull Mountain is an absolute winner; I haven't enjoyed a novel this much in years. Readers who can tolerate violent scenes will find a brilliant story and top-notch writing buried under the gore. Highly recommended...continued
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(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
C. J. Box, New York Times-bestselling author of Endangered
Bull Mountain is a sprawling, gritty, violent, tribal inter-generational crime epic with a deeply rooted sense of place and an gut-punch ending I didn't see coming James Ellroy, author of Perfidia
Bull Mountain is a stone gas and a stone winner! It's brother-versus-brother in the dope-damned South. This first novel has it all: moonshine, maryjane and mayhem! Read this book now – and succumb to a startling new talent. John Connolly, New York Times-bestselling author of The Wolf in Winter
The gripping, witty Bull Mountain is not only a fine debut, but a fine mystery novel, period. Panowich may even have carved out his own subgenre of hillbilly noir. I can't wait to see what he comes up with next. Tom Franklin, New York Times - bestselling author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter
Holy cow, what a book! It moves like a bullet. Mr. Panowich knows his mountains, his whiskey, his dope and his meth. And boy, does he know his characters, who are drawn so vividly I can't forget them...First rate, first rate! Wiley Cash, New York Times-bestselling author of This Dark Road to Mercy
This is a wonderfully rich and evocative debut novel that is steeped in both the history of Appalachia and well aware of the current challenges it faces.In Bull Mountain, one of the main characters is a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, commonly known as the ATF.
The ATF website states the organization is the oldest tax-collection agency in the United States. It was initially part of the U.S. Treasury and traces its roots back to 1789, when Congress voted to impose a tax on imported spirits to help pay debts left over from the Revolutionary War (at the time, there was no income tax, and so excise taxes such as this one were the primary means of generating funds for the government, and the Treasury Department was responsible for the collection of this revenue). During the Civil War years, Congress also authorized additional taxes on both ...
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