{"product_id":"poor-fool-voices-of-the-south-9780807119471","title":"Poor Fool (Voices of the South)","description":"\u003cp\u003ePublished in 1930  Poor Fool was Erskine Caldwells second novel. Like most of his fiction  it revolves around a gallery of grotesque characters motivated by the basest urges. The novels central figure is Blondy Niles  a down-and-out boxer who exists at the very fringes of society. The garish nighttime world of bars and prostitutes  con men and petty crimes is the milieu in which he moves. When he is approached by Salty Banks to be an unwitting fall guy in a rigged boxing scheme  a calamitous chain of events is set in motion  and death is the inevitable result. Blondy is befriended by a good-hearted prostitute  Louise  but then comes under the powerful  mysterious spell of the gruesome Mrs. Boxx  an enormous  soulless woman who lures him to her house  which has been converted into the most primitive of abortion mills. Despite the terrible acts Mrs. Boxx oversees and that Blondy is compelled to participate in  he inexplicably finds himself unable - or unwilling - to leave this chamber of horror. Only with the help of Dorothy  Mrs. Boxxs younger  daughter  does he finally free himself from the clutches of this demonic  madwoman. Yet freedom proves elusive  for by the end of this surreal  phantasmagoric adventure  Blondy and everyone he cares for have come to a bloody end. Caldwell himself likened Poor Fool to a \"diabolical dream.\" Written early in his career  it foreshadows many of the themes that were to characterize his later novels.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45275397521461,"sku":"ByrdShop_0807119474","price":242.19,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780807119471.jpg?v=1780506026","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/poor-fool-voices-of-the-south-9780807119471","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}