The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart by M. Glenn Taylor

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In a bawdy narrative evocative of the classic yet quirky tales of John Irving and Larry McMurtry, Taylor's debut novel takes readers into the hillbilly world of the Appalachian Mountains, replete with guns, moonshine, and snake handlers. Avowedly the oldest living man in West Virginia, Trenchmouth Taggart lives in the untamed wilderness -- Deliverance country -- his lips voluntarily sewn shut with fishing line. But that won't stop him from the story he has to tell.

It began a century ago, when his unstable mother tossed him into a frigid river. Downstream, the indomitable Trenchmouth bobbed to the surface with an infected mouth that would haunt him all his years and a tenacious hold on life. The Widow Dorsett smuggles him into her mountain shack, and despite their abject poverty and the mockery of his schoolmates, Trenchmouth learns the tools of self-reliance and dignity. Among the notable skills he develops, he becomes a crack shot with a rifle, a talent he employs in a local war against the coal mining companies.

In the wake of a furious gun battle, Trenchmouth goes into hiding, making only an occasional foray into civilization to quench his thirst for liquor. But when he stumbles upon some new neighbors who share his love for music, Trenchmouth's life heads in a whole new direction.

(Fall 2008 Selection)

From the Publisher

Meet Trenchmouth Taggart, a man born and orphaned in 1903, a man nicknamed for his lifelong oral affliction. His boyhood is shaped by the Widow Dorsett, a strong mountain woman who teaches him to hunt and to survive the taunts of others. In the hills of southern West Virginia, a boy grows up fast. Trenchmouth sips moonshine, handles snakes, pleases women, and masters the rifle—a skill that lands him in the middle of the West Virginia coal wars. A teenaged union sniper, Trenchmouth is exiled to the back-woods of Appalachia's foothills, where he spends his years running from the past. But trouble will sniff a man down, and an outlaw will eventually run home. Here Trenchmouth Taggart's story, like the best ballads, etches its mark deep upon the memory.

Eric Miles Williamson - The Houston Chronicle

Taylor's prose is so fluid and seemingly effortless that The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart bridges the usually irreconcilable gap between popular fiction and literary fiction. It's that rare creature - a literary page-turner - and it will please both the casual reader and the college professor . . . The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart is a stunning, fully realized, unique and ambitious book that proves there's still passion, fire and brilliance in the American novel.

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