Baxter Parish, Louisiana, is a bloody place where family tradition is stronger than law and pride is more valuable than life. Twenty-seven-year-old Jesse Tadlock returns home to Mount Olive after a peaceful, if not dull, nine-year Army hitch to claim his inheritance. With a steady job, a past love back in his life, and his own land, he thinks he's outlasted the legacy of violence that has haunted his family. But the morning after his first night in his new home, a neighbor turns up at his door with a loaded rifle on his arm and a bloodthirsty pit bull in tow. Balem "Cotton" Moxley was born in this house and he'll die there, he says, or Jesse will. With his Uncle Red pushing for him to deal with the threat the old way meeting fist with blade, bullet with bomb at odds with his desire for a simple peace, Jesse must find a way to stand up and save his own, even if it means losing everything to the fires of pride.

"Sherman's promising debut chronicles a young man's thorny return to his Louisiana hometown. Baxter Parish is a 'dead-end place, a place filled with death and violence, a territory sunk in the mire of unemployment and poverty.' After serving 12 years in the army, 30-year-old Jesse Taddock returns to Baxter Parish to bid his dying mother farewell, and then decides to stay. He secures a job as deputy sheriff, reunites with an old high school flame and buys a house with his $30,000 inheritance. Life looks to be just fine until the giant Balem 'Cotton' Moxley shows up at Jesse's doorstep with a shotgun, vowing to reclaim the land he insists rightfully belongs to him. Jesse, forced to choose between capitulation (the sheriff's strong advice) and a good hard fight, opts for the latter. With the assistance of his uncle Red, Jesse prepares to go head to head with Moxley, erecting blockades and fashioning an arsenal of bullets, bombs and blades. Sherman brilliantly reunites a land with its own set of vicious rules with a native of that land who, as a changed man, simply wants peace. Weaving his way through a series of complex characters and a terrain fertilized with a proud but bloody history, Sherman tells a spirited and engaging tale. (Oct.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information, Inc.)