PRIME LEAF
A Novel of the Kentucky Tobacco Wars
Jack Wall | Author
$24.95NOW $4.95 hardcover
- 320 pages
- 1-892514-82-6
- Fiction
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In the spirit of Robert Penn Warren's Night Rider a multi-generational account of the bloody tobacco wars at the turn of the 20th century.
“An exceptionally well-told, fast-paced, old-fashioned, knock-down-drag-out, absorbing story.”—George Bedell
the book
Just after the turn of the twentieth century, America saw the only large-scale agricultural strike in her history and the onslaught of one of the most violent sagas since the Civil War: the Kentucky tobacco wars, an amazing period in American history relatively unknown to most Americans today.
Prime Leaf is the multi-generational drama that pits two brothers against each other in a story that wrestles with what William Faulkner called "the human heart in conflict with itself."
After witnessing his father's murder, young Boyd Converse comes of age amidst family struggles over low prices paid the family by the rapidly domineering tobacco conglomerates. He joins the Dark Tobacco District Planter's Association in their struggle against Duke Trust. The Possum Hunters (later, Night Riders) are born and subsequently ravage the land burning barns and inflicting violence against farmers who refuse to cooperate, Boyd in tow. One night, the Night Riders flog Boyd's brother and a family drama of epic proportion is set in motion: the conflict of a man defined by his violent actions yet pulled by family loyalty.
Prime leaf promises a spellbinding account of the struggle between agrarian values and corporate America, remiding us just how violent yet redemptive our history can be.
the author
Jack Wall was the first writing fellow at the Sewanee Writers' Conference and a well-known Atlanta businessman.
the praise
"Prime Leaf is a wonderfully believable story about a family in western Kentucky from just after the Civil War to the tobacco wars—the disputes within the family as well as with others, their passions and loves, their greed and generosity, their betrayals and uncommon displays of loyalty. An exceptionally well-told, fast-paced, old-fashioned, knock-down-drag-out, absorbing story."—George Bedell