Reading and Book Signing with John Pritchard

Join us for a reading and book signing

Thursday, October 22nd, 5:30 to 7:00 pm (Reading at 6:00)

with

JOHN PRITCHARD

for his novel,

Hunters

(Livingston Press, $20 paperback)

Cover art and design by Amanda Bearden and Brett Trail

ORDER A SIGNED COPY

Early one winter morning, some years ago, just before daylight, a Big Foot loped across a gravel road in front of a four-wheel-drive vehicle full of Memphis duck hunters, out near the levee, a little South of the fossil town of Austin, in the Mississippi Delta,

Best of all, this Big Foot was not invisible. He had a shape. This Big Foot was the monster, not them, the Deltans, and frankly that was a great relief. Even better, this Big Foot could be shot, stuffed, and stood up by the T.V. in the den! – alongside the wild turkey, a bobcat, a coyote, some wood ducks, the head and spikey antlers of an eight-point buck . . . and the terrifying barracuda from Biloxi.

Deltans are editors of the visible. God said: “Let there be light!” But we tell him where to shine it. So, when word went out one day from the Boll & Bloom Café that a Big Foot had been sighted, all the usual Delta fears disappeared, their importance collapsed. Curiosity became king. Obsession reigned, and . . . the “Hunters” arose. Well, two of them did.

“Who doesn’t love a good Bigfoot story (or as Bass Grabbler, the purported narrator of this wild tale calls it ‘the Sasquatch boogheemoogas’)? John Pritchard, who writes like the bastard child of two Flanns (O’Connor and O’Brien), or perhaps W. C. Fields and Minnie Pearl, has an imagination stuck in overdrive. He says, ‘The main thing is, the Delta is not like anywhere else in the world,’ and proceeds to prove it through puredee Southern mythologizing. He may have invented a whole new literary form. Let’s call it Cracker Metafiction. His digression, as he relates the tale of the Delta’s first Bigfoot, is worthy of Tristram Shandy. One wants to follow every wandering lane of story. I could go on and on quoting from this laugh-a-page masterpiece but suffice it to say that this is one of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read. As Bass Grabbler says, ‘And that’s the unfluoridated truth’.” ---Corey Mesler, author of Memphis Movie Two and Happy Happy/co-owner of Burke's Book Store