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Book Reviewed by:Winner of the 2015 BookBrowse Debut Author Award
From a remarkable new voice in Southern fiction, a multigenerational saga of crime, family, and vengeance.
Clayton Burroughs comes from a long line of outlaws. For generations, the Burroughs clan has made its home on Bull Mountain in North Georgia, running shine, pot, and meth over six state lines, virtually untouched by the rule of law. To distance himself from his family's criminal empire, Clayton took the job of sheriff in a neighboring community to keep what peace he can. But when a federal agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms shows up at Clayton's office with a plan to shut down the mountain, his hidden agenda will pit brother against brother, test loyalties, and could lead Clayton down a path to self-destruction.
In a sweeping narrative spanning decades and told from alternating points of view, the novel brilliantly evokes the atmosphere of the mountain and its inhabitants: forbidding, loyal, gritty, and ruthless. A story of family - the lengths men will go to protect it, honor it, or in some cases destroy it - Bull Mountain is an incredibly assured debut that heralds a major new talent in fiction.
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BookBrowse Awards
2015
The biggest challenge I had with the book was that the time period changed from chapter to chapter, which made it difficult to follow at times. Bull Mountain is an absolute winner; I haven't enjoyed a novel this much in years. Readers who can tolerate violent scenes will find a brilliant story and top-notch writing buried under the gore. Highly recommended...continued
Full Review
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(Reviewed by Kim Kovacs).
In Bull Mountain, one of the main characters is a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, commonly known as the ATF.
The ATF website states the organization is the oldest tax-collection agency in the United States. It was initially part of the U.S. Treasury and traces its roots back to 1789, when Congress voted to impose a tax on imported spirits to help pay debts left over from the Revolutionary War (at the time, there was no income tax, and so excise taxes such as this one were the primary means of generating funds for the government, and the Treasury Department was responsible for the collection of this revenue). During the Civil War years, Congress also authorized additional taxes on both ...
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On the whole, human beings want to be good, but not too good and not quite all the time
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C. J. Box, New York Times-bestselling author of Endangered
Bull Mountain is a sprawling, gritty, violent, tribal inter-generational crime epic with a deeply rooted sense of place and an gut-punch ending I didn't see coming
