Author Tom Franklin was raised in rural southwest Alabama (Clarke County), a dozen miles from the setting of his new novel, Hell at the Breech. He was educated at the University of South Alabama and the University of Arkansas. His first book was a highly regarded short story collection, Poachers. He has been published in The Black Warrior Review, The Southern Review, and The Oxford American, among others. His stories have been included in Best American Mystery Stories of the Century, New Stories from The South, 1999 and Stories from the Blue Moon Café. Tom Franklin has received a number of fellowships and is currently at the University of Mississippi at Oxford, where he lives with his family.

Hell at the Breech is based on real events that took place in the 1890's that pitted poor white sharecroppers against the landowners who controlled their fates. The story begins when young Macy Burke, a poor white teenage orphan, accidentally shoots a local merchant, Arch Bedsole. "Tooch" Bedsole, his cousin, uses this killing as a pretext to form the Hell at the Breech gang. This group of criminals and powerless poor white tenant farmers terrorizes Clarke County, murdering and intimidating its law-abiding citizens. Sheriff Billy Waite steps in to fight this menacing outbreak of violence. Mayhem ensues. But quite a story well told.