The year is nineteen seventy one. Lost deep in the woods of West Virginia, two childhood friends discover a book that dismantles and unravels everything they once considered reality, And when an enigmatic stranger rolls into their small coal mining town in the back of a Rolls Royce, the teenagers are plunged deep into a world of drugs, sex, music, and violence. Together, the two friends confront the forces of good and evil head on - the unwitting pawns of an eternal game played without rules or directions. Feverish, satirical, and deliciously dark, Three Sixes and a Forked Tongue is an offbeat, coming-of-age, face-melting novel unlike anything you've read before.
This is one of those books that makes me say what in the hell did I just read?
It's a historical coming-of-age horror epic that spans generations and genres.
I'm not even sure how to review it. My head is still spinning.
I was hooked from the minute I met Priscilla, a young girl tending to the wounds she got in the most recent beating that is part of her everyday existence.
There is a huge cast of characters and although I was fascinated by many of them, they paled in comparison to the escapades of Maw, Lavinia, and Priscilla as mainly narrated by Joseph in a down home folksy way that made me feel like he was speaking directly to me.
I was already heavily invested in their lives long before the devil came to town.
This is a story of poverty, religion, hypocrisy, good and evil and all the gray in between, while growing up in the town of Clockmaker, a coal dust covered mining town in the 1970s.
If you are offended by strong/crude language this is not a book for you.
Otherwise, it's a funny, wistful, raunchy, entertaining read with elements of horror and just a touch of gore.
My thanks to Millions of Colors and James Tyler Toothman