This is a tough one to review for me because at times I found the narrative hard to follow but at other times I found it absolutely enthralling. Heavily influenced by Cormac McCarthy with touches of Donald Ray Pollack which are great company to be amongst.
When the world breaks you is it ok to break the world, was the question I found myself asking.
Thank you to the publisher for providing me with this arc available through netgalley.

This is my first book by Michael Farris Smith but it definitely will not be my last! Yes, it's a dark Southern gothic but it is so beautifully written and delivers a sucker punch to the gut. This is one I won't soon forget especially if I ever find myself judging someone without really knowing them. I'll be recommending this one and looking for more from this author for sure.

Sweet goodness, gracious!! Blackwood is one remarkable story that surprised me!

What a unique talent Michael Farris Smith has here with setting the powerful and distinctive tone and mood to Blackwood. I have not experienced anything like it before. It provoked a quiet feeling of bleakness, darkness and hope that whispered to me through the imagery used to the story.

The bleak, dark and sinister evil that hovers over the edges of Red Bluff, Mississippi and the story quietly started to consume me when the man, the women and the boy drift into town and awaken the evil lurking in the Kudzu. There are some dark secrets buried under a blanket of leaves that create a landscape of fear and regret that consumes these characters.

The words are written with grace and are haunting beautifully quiet. As I was reading, all I could hear was the creepy vines whispering the secrets of the past, keeping the darkness alive. There is some hope that creeps in the end, leaving me with some quiet thoughts after reading this one. I highly recommend!

Readers like myself who have followed this author from the beginning, know what to expect from his novels. Southern, gothic grit, with a dark, dark tone. This book is no exception and it starts out with a bang, well, not a bang exactly, let's just say a shocking event. From there it takes off, and the events build from there. A young man returning for answers, another man, woman and buy who are looking for some kind of life, a place to stop. A young woman, whose mother may have had answers but us now gone, and a sheriff who is clearly over his head.

There is clearly something wrong in the town of Red Bluffs, Mississippi, but where does it originate?

"This place is one big ghost story. Stories about the valley. Stories about the man who killer himself. It's what we do."

Kudzu covers everything left alone, even Colton's old house, but what else lives there. Things will get much worse, before answers are found. What and who will be left?

As usual I couldn't stop reading this darn book, but either I missed something or some questions remain unanswered. Even so, this was an exciting ride.

ARC from Netgalley.

When song writers take pen to paper, they may create lilting lullabies that waft like smoke drifting in your direction. When Michael Farris Smith strums words to page, he sets off a superb Aria encircling your soul initially with its subtle timbre. As the storyline plays out, the mind of the reader is filled bountifully while veering towards the quake of a final crashing crescendo.

Smith reaches back into something fearful. Something fearful that bears no name. It reared its ugly head in the summer of 1956 in the Mississippi Hill Country nestled among the intrusive kudzu vines. Vines that slowly take over everything in its path......the good, the bad, and the evil disguised as the humdrum of every day. It's when young Colburn, hardly twelve years old, came to call his father from the garage for supper. He paused with his hand on the doorknob........and then he went in. Life changed forever.

But birds come home to roost, once again, as Colburn returns to that town of Red Bluff in 1975. His past is his past or could it ever be? Colburn is now a sculptor who uses common items to create his works. There's no hubcap, wire, or slice of metal that he can't re-purpose into his art form. Red Bluff has advertised for free rent on abandoned storefronts in town to artists for their studios. The price is right. Or will "free" cost him more than what he bargained for?

Dust rises in heavy clouds from the backend of a battered old Cadillac. It sputters its last breath upon reaching the parking lot of Red Bluff's post office and dies. Three of its occupants, man, woman, and boy look at each other in dismay. This was not planned as they sit amongst the remains of old food cans, filthy blankets, and remnants of torn clothes.

Enter Myer, the over-weight past-his-prime sheriff with a bad back. Myer tries to get information from this trio with no success. Passing through is not happening here. Man, woman, and boy with no names eventually push the Cadillac to a shady spot on the edge of town near those choking kudzo vines. They'll wait it out until their luck changes. The likelihood of that happening doesn't seem too likely about now. But keep an eye on these three, more is yet to come.

Back to Colburn, our artist, who has settled into that storefront. He eventually finds the local watering hole of a bar owned by a red-haired attractive woman by the name of Celia. She and Colburn will be swappin' secrets and will find themselves at the receiving end of just that. Colburn can't escape his past and neither can Celia. The dark stuff always rises to the surface.

Michael Farris Smith is a brilliant wordsmith. I've savored everything he has written. My absolute favorite is Desperation Road in which he has artfully placed a finger upon the pulse of downtrodden humanity. He does this again in Blackwood wrapping this one in a distinct darkness that resides on the periphery of real and unreal. A truly gifted writer, Smith's novels pull up a chair and remain with you forever.

I received a copy of Blackwood through NetGalley for an honest review. My thanks to the talented Michael Farris Smith and to Little, Brown and Company for the opportunity.

Dark and gothic and highly relatable setting and characters. I liked the creepy undertone of the environs that were overarching in the story.

In a small southern town that has seen better days, with more people leaving – one way, or another – than staying, a car with a young boy and his parents end up in Red Bluff, their car breaking down as they were trying to make their way anywhere but where they’d come from. As this journey began, there was a second boy, but the man, not believing himself to be that boy’s father, and not really wanting either boy, anyway, left him along the way, sending him into a store and leaving before he had a chance to return. They are poor, and there is a hopelessness that surrounds this family. The man tries, unsuccessfully, to rationalize it to the mother, but she is also desperate in her own way.

In Red Bluff, the Sheriff tries to help this family, but the man rebuffs his offer, and they end up, with great effort, living in their car outside the outskirts of the town. Their car now hidden among the kudzu vines, not far from the many other things it has ingested in its need to cover everything, hiding everything, especially the past.

Among the people of this town is a man, Colbert, who has returned to Red Bluff after twenty years to face an event that has shaped his life, and which he needs to come to terms with. He works as a sculptor, turning trash into art, in a town that seems to be heading in the opposite direction. Celia, who owns the bar, seems to be the only one willing to give Colbert a gesture of friendship, or to feed a homeless young boy. It is a town filled with the lost and forlorn, and a seemingly endless string of heartbreaking and disturbing surprises are unearthed as the days pass.

And that’s just the beginning.

I have read, and loved, every one of Michael Farris Smith’s books, and this was no exception. This has some of the dark, Southern gothic tones I found in Rivers, and the prequel to Rivers, In the Beginning, the desire for a kinder, gentler life - against the odds - that I found in Desperation Road the brutality of life in The Fighter, and the anguish that comes with the waning of hope in The Hands of Strangers. It is, in short, brilliant, a work of genius. Unsettling, without being overly graphic, touching and affecting, with incredibly beautiful prose. Michael Farris Smith has crafted his best yet.


Pub Date: 03 Mar 2020

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Little, Brown and Company

NO SPOILERS... 🍃
Lock your doors and watch your children....
....this book is batty-bonkers meshuggah- FANTASTIC!

...MICHAEL FARRIS SMITH
is a writer-rock-star!!!
I’ve read everyone of his books - loved each one - and “Blackwood” tops them all!!

It’s tempting to share details - but the less you know the better.
“Blackwood” starts with two gripping beginning scenes: 1956....
Then jumps to 1975: with another gripping scene.
Both scenes never leave the readers thoughts —
Then....
.....the action kept moving and moving— giving us an extraordinary-emotional ending.

“Red Bluff had gone from being nowhere to being somewhere in only hours.
The fear and heartbreak had awaken the sleepy town with gut punches of emotion and the television crews that came and the reporters who asked questions to whoever they could get to talk on the sidewalk and the police and the detectives who moved in and out of the café and the post office and the gas stations in their white shirts and black ties were all symbolic and clear in their message— we would not be here unless tragedy has befallen”.

Michael Farris Smith - Mississippi guy - is SUCH A PHENOMENAL writer!!!
His books are a treat - and ‘Blackwood’ is the icing on the cake!!!

A 2020 book-FAVORITE!!! 🍃

Thank you Little Brown and Company, Netgalley, and Michael Farris Smith

Smith is similar to a Southern Stephen King, in this novel of a small Mississippi town beset by a group of creepy travelers. Featuring Meyer, the local sheriff who believes that the locals are more good than bad (a fact he may be sadly mistaken about), local bar owner, Celia and junkyard artist Colburn, this is a novel of the South, with all its complexities, its good and its bad