They Don't Dance Much: A Novel

by James Ross

Overview

In this classic country noir, featuring a new introduction by Daniel Woodrell, a small town farmer takes a job at a roadhouse, where unbridled greed leads to a brutal murder

Jack McDonald is barely a farmer. Boll weevils have devoured his cotton crop, his chickens have stopped laying eggs, and everything he owns is mortgaged—even his cow. He has no money, no prospects, and nothing to do but hang around filling stations, wondering where his next drink will come from. As far as hooch goes, there’s no place like Smut Milligan’s, where Breath of Spring moonshine sells for a dollar a pint.
 
A bootlegger with an entrepreneurial spirit, Milligan has plans to open a roadhouse, and he asks Jack to run the till. The music will be hot, the liquor cheap, and the clientele rough. But the only thing stronger than Milligan’s hooch is his greed, and Jack is slowly drawn into the middle of Smut’s dalliances with a married woman, the machinations of corrupt town officials—and a savage act of murder.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781453296202
Publisher:	Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
Publication date:	04/16/2013
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

James Ross (1911–1990) was born in North Carolina, where he worked as a reporter for the Daily News (Greensboro) for many years. He wrote his first and only novel, They Don’t Dance Much, in 1940. The book, considered “country noir,” was praised by the likes of Raymond Chandler and Flannery O’Connor. During the decade that followed, Ross published several short stories in literary journals such as Partisan Review, the Sewanee Review, Collier’s, and Argosy while he worked on another novel, In The Red, which was never published. 

Interviews

·       Fans of country noir or Southern noir writers like Cormac McCarthy, Daniel Woodrell, Donald Ray Pollock, and Larry Brown ·       Readers of William Faulkner ( Sanctuary ), Horace McCoy ( They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? ),and Edward Anderson ( Thieves Like Us ; Hungry Men )  

Editorial Reviews

…wry and understated…as tightly controlled as anything by Chandler or Dashiell Hammett…Jim Ross died in 1990 at the age of 79. He didn't deal in morals but in truths. They Don't Dance Much has as many of them as you're likely to find in any other work of fiction, and it parcels them out in prose that has the clarity of truth.

The Washington Post - Jonathan Yardley

"A sleazy, corrupt but completely believable story of a North Carolina town.” —Raymond Chandler
 
“A very fine book.” —Flannery O’Connor
 
“[Ross] showed us that a writer can come out of the red-clay gulches of rural North Carolina during the Depression—that is, a writer can come out of absolutely anywhere at any time—and make high art without resorting to tricks, stylish ennui or pointless savagery.” —The Millions
 
“Ross writes in classically laconic, wised-up American prose. His voice suits then and now and will still carry well tomorrow.” —Daniel Woodrell
 
“As far as I’m concerned, this book is where dark Southern fiction began, and any writer who works in the field owes Ross a debt of gratitude, whether he or she has read They Don’t Dance Much or not.” —William Gay
 
“In and out of print since it was first published in 1940, this blistering novel about a rural Carolina roadhouse with a dance floor is packed with enough desperate characters to make murder merely inevitable, but no less horrifying.” —Newsweek

From the Publisher