Smoke Signals, an online literary journal, recently published an excerpt from The Yazoo Blues. The Yazoo Blues is NewSouth author John Pritchard’s sequel to his critically acclaimed debut novella Junior Ray. Publishers Weekly awarded The Yazoo Blues a starred review, calling it “insightful” and “laugh-out-loud.”
Junior Ray Loveblood, one of the most outrageous and original personalities to appear in American literature in many years, returns in The Yazoo Blues. He relates dual stories, both that of a soldier slowly driven mad by the haunting countryside, and of Loveblood’s friend Mad Owens, whose search for existential love meets its greatest challenge in the arms of the stripper Money Scatters. Loveblood’s conclusions are hilarious, absurd, and at times intensely revealing. Equally profane and profound, the fictional narrator of Pritchard’s novel illuminates the complex stew of evolving race relations, failed economies, and corrupt politics that define much of the post-civil rights rural Deep South.
Smoke Signals is a quarterly online literary journal featuring fiction, essays, and reviews. Read an excerpt from The Yazoo Blues at Smoke Signals’ website.
The Yazoo Blues is available from NewSouth Books, Amazon, or your favorite local or online book retailer.