FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Allow us the awkward pleasure of introducing Junior Ray Loveblood, the most profane, most despicable, and funniest protagonist you are likely to encounter this year. John Pritchard's slyly profound creation, a former redneck deputy sheriff in the Mississippi Delta, is an awful man with a sickening obsession. But as Junior Ray recounts his search to find and kill a shell-shocked WWII vet named Leland Shaw in the '50s -- spewing forth a nonstop stream of foul-mouthed, misanthropic bile -- readers will find themselves laughing out loud. First-time author Pritchard undercuts Junior's onslaught in a number of ways, most obviously by turning his antihero into a classic buffoon. Indeed, as Junior Ray describes his murderous but inept quest -- which finds him stuck in quicksand, snickered at by Boy Scouts, discovering a German submarine, and fooled by the black townspeople he claims to despise -- he never realizes he's the punch line. But there are moments when he almost redeems himself, particularly when he busts out lines about a banker having "about as much feelin' as a buzzsaw." For all Junior Ray's ugly talk, the writing here is beautifully crafted. Providing counterpoint to Junior Ray's perfectly calibrated invective, Pitchard sprinkles the narrative with Leland Shaw's heartbreaking journal entries about being hunted by Nazis -- a haunting touch that, given Junior Ray's moral grounding, isn't that deluded. There are two missteps in Junior Ray: Its cover wrongly belittles this 158-page book as "a novella," and its wordy, albeit humorous introduction provides a framework that we didn't really need in the first place. These are small quibbles with a book that, while not for the squeamish, deserves shelf space beside the best southern literature -- even if it makes its neighbors blush. Seth Kaufman

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This provocative, and sure to be controversial, novella takes the reader on a field trip inside the mind of a Mississippi Delta good-old-boy ex-deputy sheriff who is as vicious and racist as the worst 1950s-60s stereotypes. Junior Ray Loveblood tells the story in his own profane, colloquial voice, telling why he hates just about everybody, and why he wants to shoot Leland Shaw, a shell-shocked World War II hero and poet who is hiding in a silo from what he believes are German patrols. The reader gets to sort out whose reality is more fantastic, Shaw's or Loveblood's, as the one stalks the other through the pages of this highly original and darkly comedic story.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Mississippi state tourist officials won't be handing this book out anytime soon, though they might be surprised by its effectiveness if they did. Pritchard's hilariously tasteless debut novel is the profanity-laced story of a racist, violent sheriff's deputy in the Mississippi delta of the 1950s. Junior Ray Loveblood is an ignorant bully who sees no reason to carry a pistol if he can't shoot someone. He doesn't like rich folks or black people, and he especially hates Leland Shaw, an obscure white Mississippi poet and crazy World War II veteran who has just escaped from a mental hospital. The story of Junior Ray's pursuit of Shaw is extracted from the unrepentant deputy 30 years later by an academic researcher with an interest in Shaw's lost (and found) notebooks. Junior Ray, accompanied by his dim, slack-jawed sidekick, Voyd Mudd, searches everywhere for Shaw, but most folks, especially Shaw's equally goofy family and their black neighbors, do everything they can to bamboozle and trick the cops. Junior Ray's peculiar views on marriage, redneck sex, religion and law enforcement are laugh-out-loud funny, as are his descriptions of getting lost in the woods, finding a German submarine and being rescued by a troop of snickering Boy Scouts. As Junior Ray's pompous interviewer points out, "this book is not for the squeamish," but its irreverent humor will win over most. (May) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.