The Great State of West Florida: A Novel

by Kent Wascom

It's 2026, and Rally is thirteen years old. The long, hot Louisiana summer looms before him like a face-melting stretch of blacktop, and the country is talking civil war while his adoptive family acts more vicious than ever. Rally spends his days wondering about his dead father's people, the Woolsacks of West Florida, who long ago led a failed rebellion to carve their own state from the swamp and sugar-sand of the coast. That family might have been his too—if his mother and a crew of vigilantes hadn't tried to kill them all back when he was a baby. Rally lives in fear of the only other his uncle Rodney, now a gunfighter on the app DU3L, where shooters square off in armed combat, and his mysterious cousin Destiny, whereabouts unknown, whose own violence brought the massacre to an end.

When the Woolsacks' legacy is co-opted by Troy Yarbrough, a far-right politician leading a movement to turn the Florida panhandle into a white Christian ethnostate, Rodney bursts into Rally's life, taking him on a journey into the wild heart of West Florida, where they join forces with a woman known only as the Governor-part prophet, part machine, with her own vision for West Florida. Soon, Rally will learn what West Florida means to the Woolsacks, and the lengths they will go to protect it, all while he falls for the machine-gun-toting, ATV-riding girl next door.

Genres: Fiction, Westerns, Dystopia, Mystery Thriller, Adult, Ebooks, Southern

Audible Audio

First published May 21, 2024

About the author

Kent Wascom is the author of The New Inheritors, Secessia, and The Blood of Heaven. He was born in New Orleans and raised in Pensacola, Florida. The Blood of Heaven was named a best book of the year by the Washington Post and NPR. It was a semifinalist for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and longlisted for the Flaherty-Dunnan Award for First Fiction. Wascom was awarded the 2012 Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival Prize for Fiction and selected as one of Gambit’s 40 Under 40. He lives in Norfolk, Virginia, where he directs the Creative Writing Program at Old Dominion University.

Reviews

[Ali]

this is actually the best cover i have ever seen in my life

[Hal Brodsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

A punk western dystopia novel set in a near future MAGA Florida. Difficult to put down. A HUGE departure from Wascom's earlier more literary novels

[Rob Smith, Jr. · Rating 1 out of 5]

A book of it’s time.

Didn’t find a character to like and kept hoping as characters are butchered for various reasons the writer would wipe out the rest. The writer has an amazing ability to machine gun the f word out without creating a depth of the characters as to why the language is used. Thus, all the character’s dialogue is mostly interchangeable.

Not helping is a plot that has been machine gunned out so often that the usage is now lazy and shameful.
Want to read a similar, but better, book like this? Read Star Wars adaption.

The ‘I hate Christianity’ books are so very 1980s. Yet, here’s still another one! How about going after another religion, at least? Vonnegut just made up one.

About Florida. The writer swaps Pensacola Christian College for his version. He must really hate the school. Wonder if he hates the Drowsy Poet coffee shop, too, because it's nearly attached to the school?

Apparently this writer has written other "books". I hope, in the future. a plot is included ...and maybe the slightest of levity.

Bottom line: I don’t recommend this book. 1 out of 10 points.
I'm providing an honest review of this book via NetGalley.com.
I highly recommend book lovers, like me, preview and review books to help get new readers.

[Monica Veno | imprettybooked]

Welp, the cover is for the girls but the book is not. Not really the yeehaw vibe I was looking for. 1.5 stars.

[Caroline Weikel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe the most ridiculous yet realistic imagining of how a Florida secession would transpire

A brief homage to the western genre where the cowboy hats are MAGA, the townies are Christian nationalists, and the state of the government is probably as lawless as now — this book is on the cusp of a great epiphany about the threat of the neoconservative movement, but it never quite appears.

[Bruce · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard to follow the initial storyline and felt like I was reading a perpetual run on sentence. No redeeming value to this read.

[Blake Trauschke · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only redeemable quality of this book is the cover.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I so wanted to love this book but I never got to that aha moment when reading. It felt like the plot/message was on the cusp of something great but I couldn’t get there. I had glimpses of what I thought was going on but then I would lose it. Very different from his other book I have read. I’ll wait to see what is released next by this author.

[Kyra Leseberg (Roots & Reads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pulp Hatfield/McCoy plot set in an apocalyptic Florida with far right politicians and gunfighters in a war to decide the fate of the panhandle in a blazing grindhouse showdown. A wild story with creative prose that mixed beauty and horror!

[Fred Forbes · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sorry, not for me. I'm not a fan of gun toting duels, gratuitous violence, torture (though some of it is pretty creative), cruelty and low information red neck characters with a chip on their shoulders who want to split Florida into two states, saving the west for evangelical Christians and white folks.
As with many millennial authors, profanity is just part of the vernacular but when I see it used it reminds me of my mother's comment many years ago that profanity is usually the sign of an inadequate vocabulary. To say nothing about the lessened shock value when a situation arises where it might actually be appropriate. Overuse tends to lessen the impact and effect.

So, interesting tale, strange characters and weird plot. It those are your thing, you might actually enjoy the read.

[Alyson · Rating 2 out of 5]

As a resident of the exact area this book is set in, I was excited for it to provide meaningful commentary on the mega-Christian-gun-loving politics that are so overwhelmingly popular here, but it really didn’t. This idea was good, but the execution could have been so much better. :/

[Mark Westmoreland · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so good and so strange and unlike anything else I’ve ever read. It’s like The Gunslinger meets The Road meets The Stand meets She Rides Shotgun. What a damn good read!

[cami semmes · Rating 1 out of 5]

remind me to never read a book by a man again. i was fooled by the pink cover!

[Taylor Hern · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty generous 3 stars, probably closer to 2.5 if we’re being honest. Parts of this book work really well but a lot of it is really messy and hard to follow at times. It however has one of the best covers I’ve ever seen in my entire life.

[J. Lynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea, but I respected it.

[Not the Profile You're Looking For · Rating 4 out of 5]

The governor 🤌🏻🔥

[Bridget · Rating 5 out of 5]

I couldn’t put this book down once I started reading it. I told myself I’d only do about 50 pages today and then do some work, but I ended up tearing through all 237 because it was impossible to stop. The momentum of the story is incredible, and every sentence is beautiful.

[Bert · Rating 3 out of 5]

A modern dystopian western set in a hellish version of Florida, so basically Florida as it is today. Haha. This cover is stunning and the book was fun too. 3.5 stars.

[Kate Corrigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I felt the concept was interesting, but the execution was lacking because of too many characters, confusing family dynamics, and not enough background information.

Basically the plot is that Florida is trying to break out into two "states": West Florida (where all the folks who do not like 'Big Government' want to live) and Florida (which would be where everyone else would live). There is a conflict as to who will run West Florida. Will it be the mega-church fundamentalist religious extremists or the drugged out inbred rednecks? So they go to war to decide.

This book also takes place in 2025, but also seems to have some more advanced technology than what could be possible a year from now, and the only person who seems to wield it is Destiny, aka The Governor, who disappears for a lot of the book. Maybe she disappeared to upgrade her golden robot arm, to build her army of weaponized drones and robot dogs, but we never really know. There is also an app for gun-slinging called DU3L that seems to just be this book's equivalent to today's MMA and a personality trait.

Destiny is related to Rally, the 13-year-old main character, but frankly, I can't really tell you how. This is also how I feel about every character in the book. The character relations aspect were complicated by drugs, incest, and unclear delineations between blood relatives, found family, and disowned family. I could not keep track of who was related to who, but in the end it did not even matter because just about everyone died in the end. Which leads me to:

Trigger Warnings: All of them.

I felt the book was written to be Southern Gothic meets revenge-based spaghetti western meets Max Max meets Grant Theft Auto. It's violent, raw, and intentionally shocking. It's so over the top so quickly and for so long I became just as numb to it as the characters. Then I stopped caring about the characters and the book in general. When the 'big end battle' took place it was somewhat predictable. Then we have the 'twist' that all the religious folks all had a deer version of mad cow and their brains were slowly melting which is a partial reason why they were so yikes. This reveal made me want to DNF because I had enough, but with only a handful of pages left I soldiered on to the finish.

[kennedy parrish · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up

[Tyler Wilson · Rating 1 out of 5]

Congratulations on a cover that got me, a person who gets the entirety of his library from second-hand stores, to pay $15 for this book. The cover is still very good, but I stopped bothering pretty quick into this book.

Every page throws a reason at you to put it down. The author seems to enjoy reveling in forcing you to spend time with characters that you'd avoid in real life. I don't mind a novel presenting me with different viewpoints, but nowadays people barely have those. Maybe it's something meta, maybe the author is genuinely out of touch. Who knows? Who cares?

If you want another good cover with a "story" setting a revolution in Florida, read Gothic Violence by Mike Ma. It's much better and it's unlike most of what you're used to reading.

[Kyle Seibel · Rating 5 out of 5]

A real balls out adventure book that feels so alive with characters and details that you forget you’re reading fiction. The first person narrative feeds into an almost oral history vibe as you learn about the conflicts, massacres, and gunslingers of the region. Pacing is near perfect. Wascom writes the absolute shit out of every single scene and delivers big time in the novel’s final pages.

[joe]

My thanks go to NetGalley and Black Cat for a review copy of this book in exchange for my honest feedback.

The Great State of West Florida is the fourth instalment in the The Woolsack Family series, written by Kent Wascom.

In this book, we follow Rally, a young boy who has a family history that would make the bravest and strongest of us wince at. He spends the majority of this tale with his uncle Rodney, a professional gunfighter on an application that gets very little explanation in the sum of this books 200+ pages. The rest of Rally’s family are no longer around and so Rodney takes him in and aims to show him how the world of West Florida operates, with gunfighting maniacs lurking around every corner and co-opting far-right politicians looking to take every crumb that’s on offer to them. Wars are breaking out and the histories around families and political parties cover the scene in every corner. Rally is slap bang in the middle of all this, and it’s his journey to uncovering the truth of what’s happened before that carries the narrative of the book.

This novel - this world - is set in what feels like a John Wayne - meets Star Wars- meets Silicone Valley world. One page we’ll have mentions of social media and new not-so-in-the-future technologies, and the next we’ll feel like we’re sat in a salloon surrounded by tobacco smoke and the aromas of whiskey. This may be what some readers want, the haziness between two vastly different environments and making it seem to work naturally, but I found it to be too distracting for the overall reading experience and I don’t think Wascom makes it work.

You feel hooked at the beginning, and despite the slight annoyance of the narrator (Rally himself) bringing up the fact that something bad is about to happen at the end of every chapter, you do feel a sense of skillfully built anticipation from the writing. There is very little annoyance in the characters themselves, despite perhaps finding them flat and one dimensional at times. So all of this works in the novels favour. Where it falls down slightly for me is in the pay off that eventually arrives, the pay off that we’re told for pages and pages is monumentally impactful. It is anything but that. Perhaps the impact is felt less because the book warns of it, but in that case, don’t mention it? Let the reader come to that themselves. It felt shoddy and purely crafted in the way it plays out.

I have not read the first 3 legs of this series, and I understand that that may take away from the overall understanding of the world and the story, but this felt confusing in large parts. Many of the things mentioned received little background explanation. Things were left to the previous books to build up the world. Not only is this confusing for someone coming in at book 2/3/4/5/6, it also asks of the reader that they actually go back prior to reading this instalment in order to recall the basics of the series. I don’t feel like you as the writer should be asking for that much buy in from the reader, and it is down to you to make the standalone book interesting and understandable enough for anyone to pick up.

This is a book that, for large parts, as a singular reading experience, rides well on the coattails of some of the mainstay characters, but eventually leaves a lot to be desired in the last 40ish pages. The world is confusing but may be suitable for certain audiences, while the world building at the start feels to quickly rushed and shallow. I would only really urge you to pick up The Great State of West Florida if you’re a fan of the author and have read the series already, or if you enjoy the mashed together world building style that this book lives in.

[scorpionwoman · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.75

a cool plot wrapped up in convoluted nonsense

kind of confusing in that “wait, is that your cousin? or your step-aunt’s niece on your dad’s side?” kind of way. very southern. i did get a little lost with who was related to who, and i think some of those family connections and descriptions bogged the story down.

there are some really interestingly beautiful descriptions. like i can see them in my head vividly and easily. sometimes they get caught in the middle of long meandering passages about one guy or the plot of a movie and im sitting there confused (again).

my favorite parts were rodney’s introduction/initial experiences with du3l and his relationship with claudia and her father. the governor is also intriguing— and cool as hell. i also really like rally as a protagonist. he really is just a little boy wrapped up in some weird family drama turned political strife and trying to grow up in it.

all in all an enjoyable story with a lot of exciting concepts that you have to dig out for yourself.

[Holly Taggart · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has an amazing cover and of course a weird Florida book caught my attention. I listened to the Audio and initially found it a little hard to follow, but it all became clear eventually. I found myself feeling as if I’d stepped into a modern Eudora Welty crossed with Twain story.
Agreed that these characters were all fairly unlikable but the story- the story felt so true to life in Florida that I did actually kind of feel a need to I do fact checking. Kind of a fascinating, grotesque and quirky story. I recommend this.

[Mack · Rating 2 out of 5]

god this was ass, never judge a book by it's cover

[Sarah Laudenbach · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Maybe that's the face of god after all, when you get down to it, because the god I want to believe in is a woman raring up in the saddle of a furious machine, one first gripping the handlebars and the other squeezing off rounds."

3.5 rounded up to a 4, because of the unnecessary amount of allusions to sexual assault. There are no actual scenes of SA in this novel, but it is threatened multiple times and in detail, so be warned of that before diving into this book.

Like a vast majority of other reviewers, The Great State of West Florida pulled me in because of its cover. I mean, c'mon, how gorgeous is this thing? But where this book seemed to lose a lot of readers is that they didn't feel like the cover matched the content of the book, which I actually wholeheartedly disagree with. The fact that this book is pink and has a woman on the cover doesn't immediately make it a Barbie, for-the-girls type of read, and you shouldn't go into it with that expectation. Instead, The Great State of West Florida is a warm, neon-soaked dream - think of this book the way you'd think of The Grand Budapest Hotel or Moulin Rouge!: it's all about Wascom's personal aesthetic as a writer.

Wascom writes Rally's voice with such authenticity, and I really love books where the narrating character has a distinct voice (Stephen Graham Jones, for instance, does this exceptionally well). Unfortunately, there are some parts where that voice is detrimental, because Rally's way of speaking and storytelling isn't always clear. It's not always meant to be, granted, but I did read this book cover to cover, and I still have absolutely no idea how everyone in this book is related to one another, or how the idea of West Florida came about in the first place. Unreliable and rambling narrators are perfectly fine, but not if it effects the reader's understanding of vital plot points.

While this book is certainly a Western in many ways, I almost consider it more of a literary coming-of-age story. That being said, there isn't necessarily an actual plot in this book, either, no big hero's journey that our protagonist goes through, no rises and falls in action. Yes, it ends with a bang, but the rest of the book is a pretty mellow, steady journey.

It's plotless, vibe-based, coming-of-age, literary fiction book set in a Republican America? Not my kind of book. At all. Literally the opposite of the kind of books I like to read - so no one is more surprised than me when I actually found myself loving The Great State of West Florida. I flew through this book twice as fast as I thought I would, and I actually enjoyed almost every part of it.

I think of The Great State of West Florida not like watching a movie, but rather, like looking at a piece of art. It's not about a journey, about a story, about a plot; it's more a vignette of moments in time, flashes of vividly described, sunset-soaked modern cowboys. Wascom's writing is really detailed and beautiful to read, and you get such a perfect vision of West Florida throughout this novel. This is the kind of book you'd want to read on your porch as the sun sets, and you're thinking of grander, more exciting things in your ordinary life.

When you consider the genre of Westerns, you really immediately think of old, white men, talking tough in a small American town in the 1800s. What I think Wascom does really effectively with The Great State of West Florida is take that genre and make it modern - futuristic, in fact, given that this book takes place in 2026 - while still holding onto the original Western aesthetics, vibes, and tropes. You still have your gunslingers, your shootouts, your standoffs, your good cowboys and your bad cowboys; but you also have iPhones and apps, Twitch streaming, robotic prosthetics, and cyborg dogs. It's an amazing blend that you wouldn't think would work, but Wascom found a way to do it.

That being said, I do think The Great State of West Florida falls into a lot of old problematic Western tropes, too. As mention in the TWs, there is no small amount of the threat of sexual violence, and there is even an instance of underage SA that is just kind of mentioned and then glossed over. There's also homophobia and racism, which is meant to be framed as the bad guys being the racists and homophobes with the good guys being accepting, but some of the language and framing of those topics in this book is questionable.

Overall, I really genuinely enjoyed this read. If you go into The Great State of West Florida expecting a girly pop cowboy book, you've come to the wrong place - but if you want a commentary on the state of Republican-controlled America wound up in a thirteen-year-old's coming-of-age story set to a scorching, pink desert sky, The Great State of West Florida is a really great read.

**Thank you to NetGalley for a copy of this book!**

[Wheeler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Falls apart at the end, which also seems rushed. The violence at the end seems gratuitous.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

WTF did I just read....

[Serena Sherman · Rating 1 out of 5]

Unreadable- great cover tho