Easter Weekend — David Bottoms

Easter weekend in Macon, Georgia: Connie Hotlzclaw is a good-hearted ex-boxer and small-time loser who can't keep out of trouble. He dreams of carrying his girlfriend, Rita Estes, a pretty Waffle House waitress, away to a ranch in Montana and a new start, away from the hamburger grease and petty hoods. His brother, Carl, though, has other ideas. He wants a big score, and he convinces pliable Connie to join in a kidnapping--an easy mark, a sure thing, a rich local college kid whose mother, of course, will do anything to get him back. All goes well, the boy's mother waits in a nearby hotel with the ransom money, and for a moment it seems Connie may get his dream of Rita and a Montana ranch. That's when the local mob muscles in on the job. Tommy, a murderous gangster and crazy as only a pure American product can be, brings in a couple of his strong boys to up the stakes, and a final showdown over the ransom money develops at Rose Hill Cemetery--for Connie a place of violence, death, and maybe a new beginning. In this gritty novel of loss, violence, and redemption, a distinguished American poet explores the dark world last seen in the novels of James M. Cain, where death lurks everywhere and a new beginning is always just out of reach.