Junior Ray

Junior Ray by Pritchard, John. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781588381118.

This novella takes the reader on a wild ride inside the mind of a Mississippi Delta good-old-boy ex-deputy sheriff who is as vicious and racist as the worst 1950s-60s stereotypes. Junior Ray Loveblood narrates the story in his own profane, colloquial voice, telling why he hates just about everybody, and why he wants to shoot Leland Shaw, a shell-shocked World War II hero and poet who is hiding in a silo from what he believes are German patrols. Through a series of sleights of hand, misdirections, and near misses, Junior Ray and his sidekick Voyd give a dark tour of the Delta country as they chase their mysterious prey. Junior Rays thoughts are peppered with excerpts from Shaws notebooks - sometimes starkly different from Junior Rays diatribe, sometimes eerily similar - and by the end of the story, it is up to the reader to sort out whose reality is more fantastic, Shaws or Lovebloods, as the one stalks the other through the pages of this darkly comedic story.