From Publishers Weekly
Rogues, rednecks and local characters populate Gomez Gap, Fla., the swampy setting of this unsteady comic novel by the Canadian author of Precious. Just out of jail, devil-may-care drunkard Tully Stamper returns to his hometown seeking his ex-lover (a woman namedor labeledDanger); his mother, an ailing, semi-senile floozy; and his ex-wife, now wed to a flamboyant movie director who plans to re-create the Civil War in an epic that has dozens of Gomez Gappers clamoring for roles. Every villager from the imposing sheriff on down bears a different grudge against Tully;as he wanders from bed to bed and brawl to brawl, oddballs pile up around him, among them a woman who ambushes and then paints birds, a brilliant artist hiding from society and a half-witted lynch mob. They converge in an overheated battle-on-film in which Tully tries to win back his loved ones through gallantryand almost everything goes wrong. Glover's ripe imagination keeps this shaggy-dog story hurtling along, but it has more momentum than direction; Tully and the band of eccentrics around him comprise a town in search of a story. Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.
The South Will Rise at Noon FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Meet Tully Stamper, a failed painter, a bankrupt, a liar, and a tippler of corn juice. He is also a modern-day knight errant and one of the world's last innocents." In this tale, Tully staggers out of the Florida swamp and into Gomez Gap, a sliver of the Old South turned Hollywood backdrop. From the moment he stumbles into bed with his sleeping ex-wife and her flamboyant film-director husband, Otto Osterwalder, we become Tully's co-conspirators, sharing his pain, his optimism, and his wayward wit.