Kings of Coweetsee
“ If you found us, you’ re likely lost, we like to tease strangers.” When Birdie Barker Price finds an old ballot box on her front porch, she opens a Pandora’ s Box full of clues to Coweetsee County’ s corrupt elections, hidden crimes, and guilty passions. She enlists the help of her ex-husband, Roy Barker, currently campaigning for sheriff. Suspicions soon fall on Charlie Clyde Harmon, a felon who served time for a fatal arson at a Black church. He still insists he was framed by the disgraced former sheriff, but no one believes him. Filled with false charges, child brides, and murder ballads about the heartache of wronged women and the revenge they seek, Kings of Coweetsee introduces us to a people and place with a vanishing culture and an uncertain future.
Dale Neal is the author of Appalachian Book of the Dead, shortlisted for the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award; Cow Across America, winner of the Novello Literary Award; and The Half-Life of Home. His short stories and essays have appeared in Our State, Smoky Mountain Living, North Carolina Literary Review, Carolina Quarterly and elsewhere. He earned an MFA in creative writing at Warren Wilson College. He teaches fiction at Lenoir-Rhyne University’ s Asheville Center for Graduate Studies. He lives in Asheville.
