The Thicket
Acclaimed author Joe Lansdale’s landmark tale of love and vengeance at the dark dawn of the East Texas oil boom.
Jack Parker knows all too well how treacherous life can be. His parents did not survive a smallpox epidemic. His grandfather was murdered. Now his sister Lula has been kidnapped by a bank robber.
Alongside bounty hunter Shorty, an eloquent dwarf with a chip on his shoulder, and Eustace, the grave-digging son of an ex-slave, Jack sets off to rescue Lula.
In turn-of-the-century Texas, that quest is likely to turn dangerous. Murderous outlaws find their homes in the remote wilderness. Oil wells spurt liquid money from the ground. And blood and redemption still rule supreme.
Jack Parker knows all too well how treacherous life can be. His parents did not survive a smallpox epidemic. His grandfather was murdered. Now his sister Lula has been kidnapped by a bank robber.
Alongside bounty hunter Shorty, an eloquent dwarf with a chip on his shoulder, and Eustace, the grave-digging son of an ex-slave, Jack sets off to rescue Lula.
In turn-of-the-century Texas, that quest is likely to turn dangerous. Murderous outlaws find their homes in the remote wilderness. Oil wells spurt liquid money from the ground. And blood and redemption still rule supreme.
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Reviews
Praise for EDGE OF DARK WATER
The pace never slackens, the writing is elegance personified, and the story tugs at the heartstrings
Joe Lansdale is one of the dark kings of modern mystery fiction, a master of the genre. His name deserves to be whispered with the greats.
Lansdale has the delight in language of the best raconteur; he also delivers some wince-inducing violence and can crank up the tension to screaming point.
A terrific and memorable novel that sticks in the mind long after it is finished
A charming Gothic tale...an adventure as funny and frightening as anything that could have been dreamed up by the Brothers Grimm - or Mark Twain
EDGE OF DARK WATER describes a trip downriver that is one-half Huck Finn, one-half Deliverance, and entirely Joe Lansdale.
The strongest, truest, and most pitch-perfect narration since Huck Finn's. Marvelous and terrifying, EDGE OF DARK WATER is the result of real genius at work. A masterpiece.
Alternately scary, funny as hell, disturbing, but always (and most importantly) memorable.
Joe Lansdale has long been one of our finest and most difficult to classify writers... In EDGE OF DARK WATER he offers a beautifully spun tale of life in the sticks, friendship and mortality, and tells it with the wit, humor and pure-deep power we've come to expect of him.
Dark and comic, bleak and terrifying, romantic and endearing...This, I kid you not, is the Great American Novel of the year.