The Fighter

by Michael Farris Smith

A blistering novel of violence and deliverance set against the mythic backdrop of the Mississippi Delta.

The acres and acres of fertile soil, the two-hundred-year-old antebellum house, all gone. And so is the woman who gave it to Jack, the foster mother only days away from dying, her mind eroded by dementia, the family legacy she entrusted to Jack now owned by banks and strangers.

And Jack's mind has begun to fail, too. The decades of bare-knuckle fighting are now taking their toll, as concussion after concussion forces him to carry around a stash of illegal painkillers and a notebook of names that separates friend from foe. But in a single twisted night, Jack loses his chance to win it all back. Hijacked by a sleazy gambler out to settle a score, Jack is robbed of the money that will clear his debt with Big Momma Sweet -- the queen of Delta vice, whose deep backwoods playground offers sin to all those willing to pay -- and open a path that could lead him back home. Yet this sudden reversal of fortunes introduces an unlikely savior in the form of a sultry, tattooed carnival worker.

Guided by what she calls her "church of coincidence," Annette pushes Jack toward redemption, only to discover that the world of Big Momma Sweet is filled with savage danger. Damaged by regret, crippled by twenty-five years of fists and elbows, heartbroken by his own betrayals, Jack is forced to step into the fighting pit one last time, the stakes nothing less than life or death. With the raw power and poetry of a young Larry Brown and the mysticism of Cormac McCarthy, Michael Farris Smith cements his place as one of the finest writers in the American literary landscape.

Genres: Fiction, Crime, Mystery, Literary Fiction, Southern, Southern Gothic, Contemporary

272 pages, Paperback

First published March 20, 2018

About the author

Michael Farris Smith is an award-winning writer whose novels have appeared on Best of the Year lists with Esquire, NPR, Southern Living, Garden & Gun, Oprah Magazine, Book Riot, and numerous other outlets, and have been named Indie Next, Barnes & Noble Discover, and Amazon Best of the Month selections. He has also written the feature-film adaptations of his novels Desperation Road and The Fighter, titled for the screen as Rumble Through the Dark. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife and daughters.

Reviews

[Paromjit · Rating 5 out of 5]

Once again the erudite Michael Farris Smith writes with poetic lyricism of southern characters in the Mississipi Delta, of lives facing desperation and suffering of biblical proportions, hanging by the last remaining thread in the last chance saloon. The self destructive Jack Boucher is in his fifties, growing up with his foster mother, Maryann, her indomitable strength and love saving him as a child. Now, his beloved Maryann is in the throes of dementia and dying. She gave Jack her home, a family legacy that he lost through accumulated gambling debts, now in the hands of those looking to sell it. Jack's own mind is faltering and failing, unsurprising after his decades as a bare knuckle fighter, suffering concussion after concussion, leaving him addicted to illegal painkillers and forced to rely on his notebook which documents his friends and foes, as his memories wither and decay. However, he cannot escape from his overwhelming guilt, betrayals and regrets as he sets out to save Maryann's home and his soul.

Jack owes money to the all powerful, merciless, and uncompromising Big Momma Sweet, and no-one gets away without settling their debts, if they have any aspirations of living. He has the money, but a cruel twist of fate ensures his money is lost. His path crosses with that of the free spirit that is Annette, a tattooed carnival woman who beckons Jack onto the road towards redemption without reckoning on the dangers that Big Momma Sweet brings. Jack finds himself boxed in, with nowhere to go but back into the unforgiving and brutal fighting ring with his very life at stake. This is a relentlessly dark, atmospheric, bleak and viscerally brutal world for the reader to traverse through with the barest glimmer of light or hope within it. However, the author ensures that it is never less than compelling with his evocative and vibrant prose, rich descriptions and complex characterisation.

Farris Smith has written a memorable novel on a topic that I would not normally contemplate reading, that of a southern fighter. Whilst its darkness, brutality and violence is hard to endure, it captures the setting and trajectory of Jack's life with authenticity. It has a strong sense of location with its people, traditions, southern lives. Farris Smith gives us an outstandingly heartbreaking and powerful narrative of pain, love, intense suffering and redemption. In the background you just might hear the varied heartfelt southern blues tracks playing as the story unfolds, not to mention the telling of biblical stories. Outstanding storytelling and comes highly recommended. Many thanks to Oldcastle Books for an ARC.

[Candi · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

I honestly wasn’t sure about reading this book. I’ve wanted to dip into one of Michael Farris Smith’s highly regarded novels for some time, but this one, with this character, Jack Boucher?? "His life was filled with drug dealers and illegal gamblers and men who killed dogs with other dogs and fighters like himself who lived in violent and unforgiving worlds." Eh, probably not for me. But then, so many of my trusted friends here have loved this author and this particular book. And I have learned not to form an unfair and harsh preconceived notion of any book. And then I read this: "The only one who loved him was sitting in a nursing home in Clarksdale and could no longer recognize his face or his name and he had betrayed her beyond even his own imagination but he had eight days to bring her home." So okay, maybe there is a really good story hiding in here with the Wild Turkey, the little red pills, the excruciating headaches, the blood, and some very scary, unsavory characters (I’m talking about you, Big Momma Sweet!) Before the first chapter had concluded, I was hooked. The best authors do not have to pull me in with relatable characters – at least I don’t need to wholly relate to them on the surface. But a brilliant writer like MFS somehow chips away at that surface and points out to me that we are all really the same at the core, aren’t we? We are all human beings craving love, belonging, and some sort of meaning to life.

It’s quite evident from the beginning that Jack Boucher is scarred. Not just the visible scars he sports from all his years of bare knuckle cage fighting, but also those scars that one does not immediately see. The scars that left their mark on his soul when he was dropped off at the age of two at the doors of the Salvation Army store. The scars that were made as he was passed around to multiple foster and group homes. The scars of abandonment. Until Maryann. Maryann who took him in and poured all her love and care into raising this troubled young boy from the age of twelve. We never really ‘meet’ Maryann in this novel, as she is in a nursing home facility when the book begins, but we see flashbacks to her life with Jack. You feel as if you really know her, and I grew to love her. Like anyone, Maryann has her share of longings and secrets. "In the days she carried an air of optimism but by the end of their first summer together the boy had seen enough of her in the serenity of night to believe she lived with ghosts and in the mornings he sometimes expected to see their ashen footprints across the smoothworn floor." And then there is Annette, the exotic young woman who tells her life story through a series of tattoos twined about her body. Her life is a transient one, as she works the carnival circuit. She may not be a church-going woman in the literal sense, but she does keep faith with her own brand of religion. "She believed she could have anything she wanted. But she didn’t know what she wanted so she had lived her young adult life guided by her own church of coincidence and she faithfully followed its direction without the necessity of reason or justification, like a fallen leaf trusting its flight to the shifts of a might wind." As fate would have it, lives intersect in mysterious ways.

Without doubt, this novel had me on edge from the start. It was both brutal and tender. The feeling of desperation is quite palpable throughout. The contrast between the selfless mother’s love shown by Maryann and the ruthless and savage behavior of Big Momma Sweet and her crew was striking. There are glimmers of hope interspersed with the misery of this damaged man. The story is raw and gritty but beautifully written. Jack is The Fighter, and I rooted for him as he fought for redemption and the memory of the love that saved him.

"Out there was the world and he wanted to belong to it in some way he could not explain to himself or anyone else."

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

The only person who loved Jack Boucher was sitting in a nursing home.
Jack’s life was filled with drug dealers, illegal gamblers, and men who killed dogs with other dogs and fighters like himself who lived in violent and unforgiving worlds.
But the one person - who rescued him from a childhood of abandonment and debauchery, didn’t recognize him any longer. Maryann was dying - in hospice - with dementia.

While Maryann’s mind was failing her, so was Jack’s, from having had many concussions. Jack carries a notebook with him to help him keep track of who is who - the names of the good guys and his enemies.
Maryann had gifted Jack her property- but because of the ways things turned out - the bank and strangers owned it. So Jack was broke and not in great physical shape.
Thwarted and tortuous—Jack had a debt to clear.
JACK MUST FIGHT. He’s in his 50’s. His physical pain is real. He had injuries.
...... the rest of this story becomes life or death for Jack!

I wouldn’t normally have considered reading a story about ‘a fighter’.....but having read every other book that Michael Farris Smith has written....I already expected a dark setting - and broken spirits from the characters-
I also knew - that Michael Farris Smith could write depressive like nobodies business - but in a very awe-impressive way. “The Fighter” is as intense and masterfully written as much as his other books. Michael Farris Smith writes - and I feel emotions!

There were sweet introspective scenes of flashback memories at times too.
I felt like I was on the river myself in Clarksdale, Mississippi, looking back with Jack.
“Out across the moonlit acreage he imagined the river and he saw the boat coming toward him. He saw the flags and smoke rose into the stars and the land parted and moved in waves and he saw the ghostlike figures moving across the deck and leaning over the rails of the balcony. He touched his fingertips to the window pain as the river boat came closer and he listened and hoped to hear someone call his name and then as the black waves pushed higher and crashed upon the shores of Maryann’s backyard he saw the boat was not slowing down and made a great mechanical roar as it pulled to the left and tossed waves against the backyard and against the house and then it was gone”.

I enjoyed this three day twisty gritty story - filled with jukejoints, barrooms, and gambling houses - with interesting characters....a tattooed goddess named Annette and Big Sweet Momma....who wants to collect on her debt.

Powerful beautiful prose...... a life or death story!

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

[Susanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars.

My Cup Runneth Over and Yes, Tears Fell.

Michael Farris Smith did it again. At first, his words soothe, flowing freely like water meandering through a lazy river. Softly, quietly almost like hot breath hitting the skin, in and out. Reading his prose my breath catches, my heart seizes, clenching and my throat gets tight and my eyes fill with tears, threatening to fall over and one by one, they fall, hitting my cheeks and the sobbing commences.

Jack Boucher is from the Mississippi Delta. He was “The Fighter.” At one time he was fierce, scrappy and someone to be reckoned with. Now he is a shell of the man he once was. Addicted to drugs and gambling, willing to do whatever it takes to save his foster mother Maryann’s home from foreclosure, even though Maryann can barely recognize him now that she is struggling from dementia, with days left to live. Jack finally won the money to keep Maryann’s home and then in an instant, it’s gone – and he loses everything all over again. Now he must face Big Momma Sweet to whom he owes a huge debt. The only way to pay it .. is to fight yet again. Annette is a carnival worker, covered in tattoos. She is sexy and sultry and people pay lots of money and come from far and near to catch a glimpse. When Annette meets Jack both of their lives change forever. She teaches Jack about redemption and peace. But is it too late?

Michael Farris Smith draws you into his novels slowly. It’s like the wind.. you can’t see it but you can feel it. And when you feel it, it’s in the depths of your soul and it takes root, wholly, fully and it doesn’t let go. My heart is still heavy and tears, they still fill my eyes whenever I think of the Delta, Maryann, and well, “The Fighter.”

“The Fighter” is the second novel that I’ve read by Michael Farris Smith – as he is, in fact, becoming one of my favorite authors. “Desperation Road” was one of my favorite reads of last year and I have yet to stop thinking about Russell - the main character in that novel, who haunts me, who will always haunt me. While I didn’t love this novel quite as much as that one, “The Fighter” was a worthy follow up and I highly recommend it.

Thank you to NetGalley, Little, Brown and Company and Michael Farris Smith for a complimentary copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review.

Published on Goodreads, NetGalley, Amazon and Twitter on 4.16.18.

[Larry H · Rating 4 out of 5]

Between 3.5 and 4 stars, rounding up.

"To be alive at all is to have scars."
—John Steinbeck

Michael Farris Smith chose the above epigraph for his new novel, The Fighter , and there may be few epigraphs more well-matched than this one.

Jack Boucher has been fighting since nearly the day he was born. Abandoned at a young age, shifted from foster home to foster home, he quickly learned not to get attached to anyone or anything, to always watch his back. At 12 he finally finds Maryann, the foster mother who wants to care for Jack, wants him to know he's worthy of being cared about. But now Maryann suffers from dementia, and most days doesn't even know her own name, let alone Jack's.

And Jack has more than his own share of problems. Decades of bare-knuckle fighting have left him in unspeakable pain, and the immense number of concussions he has sustained through the years has left his brain shell-shocked. He carries with him a notebook in which he has to write down those people who pose a danger to him, as well as other information, since he's incapable of remembering it himself. He's also become a champ at self-medicating, using stolen painkillers chased with liquor to take the edge off.

"He felt the twenty years of granite fists and gnarled knuckles beating against his temples and the bridge of his nose and across his forehead and into the back of his head. The sharp points of elbows into his kidneys and into the hard muscles of his thighs and into his throat and the thrust of knees against his own and into his lower back and against his ears and jaw."

Maryann has trusted her one legacy, her family home, to Jack. But gambling debts have put the house and the land in the hands of the bank, and he has only eight days to make good on what is owed before it is sold. For Maryann to lose her history, and for Jack to be responsible, is a loss too great to ponder, even if she isn't aware of what is going on around her. Jack is determined to get the money he needs, by gambling or other means.

There's one other drawback in his way—Big Momma Sweet, who rules the Mississippi Delta and has eyes and spies everywhere. You don't owe Big Momma and not square your debts, not if you want to survive. You may think you can hide, but you can't. Jack is ready to pay off his debt and finally get his life back—and then disaster strikes. Addled by pain and burgeoning dementia of his own, it appears he has only one avenue left—getting back in the ring one more time, despite the consequences.

Smith writes about desperation and last chances more effectively than most authors out there. The Fighter is often brutal and relentless, but there are notes of hope. Jack is a fascinating character, and you are drawn into his struggles, even if you have a feeling you know where things will end up. The story of his hard-fought childhood and the woman who saved him is poignant, and you understand why he's willing to risk everything for her.

I didn't love this book as much as Smith's last, Desperation Road (see my original review), because I found its pace a little erratic, and the relentless brutality started to depress me. But I love the way Smith writes, and this is still a tremendously worthwhile read, although hard to take at times. He definitely has a fan in me!

NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company provided me an advance copy of the book in exchange for an unbiased review. Thanks for making this available!

See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com, or check out my list of the best books I read in 2017 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2018/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2017.html.

[Canadian Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Grit, violence, red pills; blue pills crippling head pain; kneecaps and twisted bones; paying off a debt; Big Mamma Sweet; a few too many fights; Maryanne. Annette.
Jack Boucher is about to fight his last fight. A 46 year old who is suffering from repeated head trauma but needs to win In order to do right for all of his wrongs.
The clock is ticking; and he is dying.
4.5⭐️ this was a fast paced, deeper than the fight, kind of read. Sweet -
And not in the mamma style

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
This is the story of Jack Boucher, who at two years of age was dropped off and left at a Salvation Army donation center by his parents. He was in and out of several foster and group homes until one day at 12 years and old, a door opens to improve his life.
I really don’t want to say more about this story except that he was bullied in school and later on became a fighter, a caged ring fighter..
I went into this story not knowing anything about it but the title... I’m glad of that.
I loved this story and how it unfolded and ended, a very fast read... as are all of this author’s books.

Michael Farris Smith has become a favorite author of mine! I have read all of his novels and will read anything he writes in the future. I could easily see any of his books made into movies, he’s the kind of writer that you can picture all the scenes of the book in your head😊

[Debra - can't post any comments on site today grrr · Rating 4 out of 5]

No one writes desperation quite like Michael Farris Smith. He writes characters who have given all they can possibly give, who have their back against the wall, who have a hard life, who don't have any steam left, who have already dug down deep into their souls for that last bit of strength...he writes about survivors, the downtrodden, the damaged and the fighters. He writes about pain, both physical and emotional. It all so very sad and yet beautiful at the same time. He is a gifted writer who draws you into his characters bleak world and shows you that last little bit of light they still have burning deep down inside of them.

The unforgiving Mississippi Delta sets the stage for this book. Jack is a fighter. In many ways, he has been a fighter his entire life. Abandoned as a baby, he was placed in foster care and eventually found a home with his foster mother, Maryann. Both were outcasts in a way - Jack the foster kid, Maryann a lesbian who society looked down upon. Both fought in their own quiet ways against the views and harsh judgement of society, until one day, Jack decided to use his fists. From that point on, there was no turning back. Now, Jack is in debt to Big Momma Sweet, the queen of the Delta vice who in unforgiving and who Jack owes a large sum of money. Maryann is in a nursing home and Jack is dealing with the physical ravages of being a fighter- severe headaches and bodily pains. He has been broken and beaten so many times he must write things down in a notebook, so he can remember them. In the delta, there is no rest for the weary. All he wants is to be done and pay his debt. But life is not kind and circumstances beyond his control pop up and forces him to fight for his memory, his life and his chance at paying off his debt.

While reading this book, I thought of the movie "The Wrestler". The story-lines are not the same, but the themes are: a man, past his prime, pushing himself to the limit. Struggling against not only his mind, but his body to have glory one last time. Again, that word "desperation" pops up. Will Jack's story end with a happy ending or a blaze of glory?

Jack is not alone in this book. He also becomes introduced to a 23-year-old tattooed carnival worker who is looking for answers on a quest to get them. Will a chance encounter between Jack and Annette, be the answer they both are looking for? Can rights ever be wronged?

Michael Farris Smith is such a gifted Author. He doesn't write fairy tales folks, he writes about raw pain, using real characters who struggle and have scars. I feel as if I am in the hands of a master when reading a novel by Smith. He knows how to write pain, he knows how to write redemption, desperation and hope. I don't know what else to say except fans of Smith will not be disappointed. Beautifully written and moving, The Fighter does not disappoint. Highly recommend!

Thank you to Little, Brown and Company and NetGalley who provided me a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

See more of my reviews at www.openbookpost.com.

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

The life of Jack Boucher, a FIGHTER.

Once again, Michael Farris Smith grabs my attention right from the start....."When he was two years old, he was dropped off at the Salvation Army secondhand store and his life from then on was one filled with strangers".....and continues to tell a unique story....one of lost memories, hope and a bit of magic.

Jack begins his young life being transferred from foster home to foster home feeling alone and unwanted; and the bullies at one school, they force him to take a stand. From there on, his life changes. Jack finds an interest, begins to educate himself, and at the age of 17 steps into the cage for the first time....a risky life altering decision.

THE FIGHTER alternates between past and present (sometimes erratically) as it is told from the damaged mind and tortured soul of a man trying to manage excruciating pain amidst lost memory....a man on the run with a price on his head....a man with no one to turn to who desperately needs to right a wrong before it's too late. Jack Boucher IS a FIGHTER....a man LITERALLY fighting for his life.

HUGE fan here of the talented Michael Farris Smith! Totally engaged....yet again!

Many thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the ARC COMING MARCH 20, 2018 in exchange for a review.

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have had this arc on my Kindle for over a month. I love this author, loved his previous two books, but hate boxing with a passion. Bare knuckle fighting? Just the thought makes me shudder. Kept putting off reading the book. Then several reviews from my friends, friend whose ratings I trust, all fours and fives. So, I picked it up, and in a short time became fully immersed in Jack's story.

The amazing thing this author does so well is giving us a character, a desperate, down on his luck, end of his rope character, the kind of person if we met him in real life we would probably give them a wide berth. Yet, Farris makes the reader care about them, he has done it three times now for me, and I suspect he will do it again. Because what he also does is make this character vulnerable, gives us just enough, and maybe more, to cheer this character on, to want him to prevail. He has a tender spot, and this despite all the scary stuff makes him like us.

This is a gritty, intense book, no getting around that. Had to put iit down several times, look away, but I also needed to pick it back up again, find out what happens. There is violence, quite a bit actually, a no holds barred fight, but there is so much more. There is tenderness and love, once again showing us that people are never just one thing, one way. It also shows how Jack got there, small glimpses into his past. No one is more surprised than I by my rating. All I can say is this book got to me, made me feel all the feels, and I know it is a book I will remember. So there you have it.

ARC from Netgalley.

[Jennifer ~ TarHeelReader · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 dark, gritty stars! ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

My first book by Michael Farris Smith, The Fighter, is a gift in the form of a new author to love.

Jack has lost it all many times over. This time it’s the land and historic antebellum home he inherited from his beloved foster mother, Maryann.

Jack is a fighter. For decades he has fought bare-handed and has incurred multiple concussions, which are starting to affect his cognition. On top of that, he self-medicates with painkillers. He keeps a notebook of names to help him remember who is a friend or an enemy; that’s how difficult life is for him right now.

Jack is working hard to reclaim his property when he is knocked to the ground again by a gambler who takes all his stashed money. He then is introduced to Annette, a free spirit, who promises to help him make things right again.

At this point, Jack is losing his mind and is hardly standing on his own two feet- literally and figuratively…but he has no choice but to fight one more time to earn back what is rightfully his. He is absolutely fighting for his life.

The Fighter is gritty, dark, brutal, and violent with a threadbare honesty and authenticity that brings Jack’s story to life. There is a strong sense of time and place in Jack’s world, seeing things how he experiences them. The writing is powerful and full of suffering and utter sacrifice juxtaposed with redemption. Chock-full of interesting characters, Michael Farris Smith is a born storyteller, and I was wholeheartedly invested in Jack as a character and wishing for positive outcome for him. The harsh brutality was matched with a tenderness to the emotions, and that, in my opinion, cannot be beat.

Thank you to Little, Brown for the complimentary copy. All opinions are my own.

My reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com

[karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

i think if i had read this under different circumstances, i would have appreciated it more. this is a short book that probably benefits from a one-or-two sitting read, rather than how i read it - over the course of nearly two weeks of 4 am commutes, waiting rooms, a hospital bed, post-op haze - all by a very distracted reader who selfishly let her own problems loom larger than that those of the character’s, who objectively has it much worse than me. i thought i was doing the smart thing by choosing a short book for Cancer 2 - The Recancering™, instead of some massive 700-page epic with maps and family trees and sprawling storylines, but i think that would actually have been easier to latch onto than this small, tight, slick little story which doesn’t have any fat to chew on and you need to watch every word - there’s no room for woolgathering/moping in your own sorrows here.

it’s a shame, because i’ve been meaning to read this guy for a while, and it’s ordinarily the kind of thing i would adore - gritty, shitty, fighty, full of bad decisions and regrets and the kind of backwoods ethics i dig, where scores are settled without involving any outside parties; eye for an eye/pound of flesh, all the good old exchanges with harsher penalties for breaking a “law” than anything a courtroom can dish out.

it’s got a down-on-his-luck antihero in jack boucher; a battered bare-knuckled cage fighter whose years of physical abuse have left him with a pill habit, a rattling of memories scattered by intense migraines, and debts he cannot pay. he’s been caught in a downward spiral, making bad decisions, scrambling to correct those decisions with short-term solutions that bring him deeper troubles, more shame, more people eager to see him fail, while his foster mother maryann - the only person who has ever mattered to him, is in a hospice, afflicted with dementia, not recognizing him nor aware that he is about to lose the family home and land she’d signed over to him.

the slim little book is split between jack and annette, the alluring former stripper/current tattooed lady in a traveling carnival, who is considering the next step in her voyage of self-discovery when she finds something jack has lost, planting a new set of crossroads in front of her.

i was hooked by the beginning, but whether it was because of my suboptimal attention span or the book itself, i felt warm-not-hot about it by the end. one of the main tracks of this book is annette and her belief in “the church of coincidence,” and while i’m not looking to be dismissive of anyone’s faith, this story was just a bit too dependent upon coincidence for my tastes. it made it feel, i don’t know, mythic maybe? something more posed than warmblooded, where unlikely things happen, paths cross, characters who represent ideas/choices/conflicts meet because they must, temptation is writ in capital letters, and o - that hubris, o - that achilles heel. there’s even a variation of the greek chorus in the final sequence, and a tone slightly less gritty than i’ve come to expect in my grit lit. this is by no means gentle, but it’s also not outright brutal. it’s somewhere in the middle of the two, and it’s exactly in the middle of my five-star allotment. i’m still interested in reading more by this guy, and i have two more books of his here to explore, this was just a badly-timed read on my part, so regrets and apologies all around.

come to my blog!

[Cheri · Rating 5 out of 5]

”These are hands that can offer protection
But hid me from my own reflection
I’m that book that ain’t finished, a sink full of dishes,
The horse that ain’t winning, the priest that’s still sinning
The spark that starts the fire

“I am the fighter, though not a boxer by trade
I am the fighter, few will remember my name”
--The Fighter, lyrics by Bon Jovi

His life seems destined from his beginning, the moment when his parents leave him outside the donation door at a Salvation Army secondhand store in Tunica, Mississippi, wearing only a drooping diaper, with a backpack holding diapers, random socks and a few shirts, with his green army men tossed casually beside him. Driving away without him, two years old, left behind like clothes they bought in haste, and never really cared for. The door would open, then, and the two women working would pick him up, and carry him inside wondering what the world had come to that a child could be so casually discarded.

”I pity those who have to live behind me in this weary and heartless world.” one woman said to the other.

And for a while, that moment was in all the moments that would follow him. A door would open for him for a while, only to be closed down the road. Another door would open, and that would be where he would stay until that door would close, as well.

By the time he was twelve, Jack Boucher had been in four foster homes, two group homes, had attended five different schools. So when they came to him once again, and told him to ”gather his things”, it shouldn’t be a surprise that he didn’t view this place as a place he should count on staying.

” A white antebellum with a porch stretching across the front on the bottom and top floors. Flaking paint on the sun side and vines hanging in baskets along the porch with their twisted and green trails swaying in the wind. A woman sat in a rocker and she rose to meet them. She wore work gloves and she pulled them off and tossed them on the ground as she approached the van as if readying herself for whatever may be climbing out.”

She would be the one, this woman, who would care for him from then on, his foster mother who offered him a home, and love. She would try to steer him away from his desire to make a living with his bare knuckles and brute strength, and would ultimately fail in that, but she never failed him.

And now? She’s in a care facility, and Jack’s on the verge of saving the two-hundred-year-old home, and the land that was her family legacy from the bank, and others. No matter how broken and bruised his body, and the agonizing pain he endures from decades of fighting, he is on his way back to pay off debts owed.

Jack is battle-weary, broken and bruised. His energy is consumed by never-ending pain, with little left to give to managing or improving his life. The repeated blows to his head have created problems for him memory-wise, so he’s taken to writing down what things he does remember, people he knows he should avoid, people who are, or were, his friends.

When he meets a young woman, a believer in her own religion-of-sorts, the church of coincidences, she sees fate behind this auspicious meeting and begins to try to convince him that sometimes fate does intercede.

Set in the Mississippi Delta region, there is a gritty realism to this story, a dark view of this world, perhaps, but there is redemption and perhaps even light when you find someone or somewhere that you can finally call home.

Pub Date: 20 Mar 2018


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

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

"To be alive at all is to have scars." (John Steinbeck)

A man unable.......backtracked to a boy unable.

Abandoned to a second-hand life behind a second-hand store alley at the age of two. Strange how that old, dilapitated sign "No Younguns" on the brick wall hung unread by the heartless.

Jack Boucher gripped the handle of his well-worn suitcase. His was the temporary life of foster home after foster home circling the Mississippi Delta. Defiance filtered through rejection as expected as day-old bitter grounds perculating on the back stove. An acrid brew swirling in a chipped cup.

Until the old truck pulled up at the bright white house and Maryann stepped out on the front porch. Jack's hands formed fists and he was ready to run to the ends of those 200 acre fields into oblivion. She stood her ground and so did he. Both of them dumped out of the paper sack of life. Maryann rocking passively on that porch giving in to social mores. Jack drawing out those scabbed fists time and again on the playground. Both fighting the seen and the unseen.

Michael Farris Smith knows how to create the walking wounded displaced by an indifferent society. His main character of Jack is engulfed in the quicksand of mounting debts and the ragged claws of addiction. Big Momma Sweet waits for no one. She's already sent out Skelly armed with knife in hand as her calling card. Jack's lifelong nomad life as a backdoor fighter has left him mentally and physically depleted. Does he have one more fight left in him to beat the foreclosure on Maryann's house? Can he bring her back from the obscurity of her last breaths?

I can only say that reading Farris Smith is like being immersed in the gentleness of waves on the Mississippi while, at the same time, feeling the deep jaggedness of the rocks far below. His characters are raw and unfiltered and brimming with the underbelly of life. Jack faces insurmountable odds. It is a similar theme weaving through Desperation Road which is one of my all-time favorite reads.....ever. Another memorable and gut-wretching read from this highly talented author. Bravo, Michael Farris Smith.

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

[LA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Halfwired, half-drunk, fully loaded. Those words don't belong to me but they're how this story started and how it has left me feeling afterward. UPDATE...June, 2018...Looks like movie rights have been picked up.

Original review....
In the category of Best Gritty Mothers Day Reads, this one fit for me.

I have witnessed chronic pain. Have seen someone's memory slip away like shadows do when clouds obscure the sky. I've known people who sought to fill a hole within themselves and those too afraid to love openly. And then there is the love a grown man feels toward his mom.

No book report and no spoilers. Here, in Smith's brutally beautiful novel, the lives of Jack and Annette and Maryann remind me of every man and every woman who has looked toward family and for a sense of belonging. Their story is set in the mud stained Mississippi delta, but it would fit in the Lake District on the far side of the Atlantic or on the hillsides of Italy. This story is about belonging. It is as big as the world.

It's a funny coincidence that I've recently read Elmet about a bare knuckle fighter's son and The Tattooed Girl whose title character is covered in images in ink. You will meet two characters here who fit at least that physical description. Unlike either of those novels, though, this one is entirely relatable. I live in the Deep South. My husband is from a Mississippi town smaller than the site for the final round of this tale. This is the land whose cotton fields made many rich and many more poor - again, those words are Smith's not my own. But if you do not live with a silver spoon in hand or have ever staggered toward a dream you didn't deserve and maybe felt regret, The Fighter might be in you too. Sometimes life really feels like a cage fight.

"They ambled along the side of the straight, worn road. He crept and she held his arm and talked of the night and the stars and the clumps of cotton that seemed like tiny pieces of moon that had flaked away and fell onto the earth. Nothing moved in the night but for them."

This guy, this Michael Farris Smith is one incredible writer. Remember his name. Read him. I knew that the paths of the fighter and the girl would have to converge, but if you'll forgive me the phrasing, the terms of their meeting cold-cocked me. Never saw it coming.

There is some stain of faith in this story. Not religious dogma or anything that trite. "The holy church of coincidence" and pain are what put Annette and Jack onto their knees, and regardless who you are, I know you've hoped for that at some time in your life.

If you have ever prayed you’d had a parent that actually loved you - or if you were lucky enough to bask in but maybe take for granted that love - then this story will resonate. Foster parents - this book is for you.

You will not know this story's destination when you get on its road and pick up a stranger. But as Smith instructs, rumble through the dark with abandon.. Five stars.

My thanks to the author and publisher for an advance reading copy (which my husband and 15 year old son fought me for). I've gone ahead and also purchased the Kindle version to stop the brawl. This little welter weight won Round One.
https://www.facebook.com/MichaelFarri...

[Zoeytron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Copy furnished by Net Galley for the price of a review.

Deep in the heart of the Mississippi Delta, an erstwhile trading camp serves as the means to satisfy any and all illicit vices.  Name your poison, it will surely be available - for a price.  Big Mama Sweet rules the roost with an iron fist.  She is legend with her knives and her branding iron, and you had best watch how you step.  With her wild hair and achy knees, nothing escapes Big Mama's beady eyes.

Years spent as a cage fighter have left Jack Boucher a broken man.  Scarred on the outside, battered and ruined on the inside, the relentless poundings have taken a terrible toll.  He owes a sizeable amount of money to Big Mama Sweet, and settling up will come at a price that may be higher than he can pay.  Destiny places Jack in the path of a young woman who is being threatened.  Her body aglow with skin illustrations, she may be the lynch pin on which Jack's luck rests.

Once again, Michael Farris Smith breathes the very life into his characters.  You may not like them, but they feel real.  Raw and gritty is the name of the game with this story.

[James Thane · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the age of two, Jack Boucher was abandoned at a Salvation Army thrift store like a bag of old clothes that nobody wanted anymore. In the years after, he would be passed from hand to hand, through one foster home after another, until finally, at the age of twelve, he was adopted by a woman named Maryann from Clarksdale, Mississippi, who might have felt even lonlier than he.

As the novel opens, Jack is now about forty-five, going on seventy-five. At eighteen, he decided to leave the home that Maryann had made for him and follow the southern circuit as a cage fighter. Early on, he had some good years, but those are far behind. He's now a crippled wreck of a man, dependent on booze and illegal pain pills just to make it through the day. And if that weren't bad enough, he now owes $12,000 to a gangster named Big Momma Sweet who is the queen of vice in the Mississippi Delta.

Maryann is now suffering from dementia and dying in a nursing home. Jack has mortgaged the home and the property she entrusted to him in a failed effort to get ahead of the game one last time. He hates himself for letting her down and then, in a miracle stroke of luck, he wins enough money in a casino to pay off Big Momma Sweet. He hopes that this will be a first step toward paying off the mortgage on Maryann's house and bringing her home again so that she can die there in peace. But fate turns against him once again and in a cruel accident, he loses the money on his way to pay the debt.

What follows is a beautifully-written story that is occasionally as heart-breaking to read as are the characters who inhabit it. As evidenced by his previous book, Desperation Road, nobody does down-and-out quite like Michael Farris Smith. Smith's Mississippi is a hard, stark land where nothing comes easily to anyone, certainly not to people like Jack Boucher, his foster mother, and the other memorable characters that Smith has created here. Jack Boucher, in particular, is so vividly written that the reader can practically feel every ache and pain and disappointment that he endures. This is a character and a book that no reader will soon forget.

[Shelby *trains flying monkeys* · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars
Jack Boucher was dropped off at the second hand store when he was two years old.
(Inserting tidbit that stuck in my head. His last name is pronounced Boo-shay. No relation to this guy.)


After that he spends time in foster homes and finally lucks up when he is placed with the one woman that will care for him. Once there he is bullied at school and has to learn to take up for himself. Then he finds a flyer in an alley for a super secret fight that is going on and it changes Jack.


Fast forward to present day...Jack has some memory problems (probably from the head shots he has taken fighting) and has to carry around notes with people's names on them. That way he can figure out if someone is a friend or if they have stabbed him in the back years ago.

He thinks he is finally going to come out on top of things because he has money to pay off his gambling debts from Big Mama Sweet. But this wouldn't be a dark book if some crap didn't go down. He ends up losing the money and his foster mom is in the nursing home dying, and if his luck wasn't bad enough..he is also losing the house she left him.

Big Mama Sweet does not take his not being able to pay her very well and puts out an offer he can't refuse and Jack is going to end up having to do another fight.

So...I liked this book okay but I did not love it. For such a interesting blurb and storyline I ended up bored most of the time. Meh.

Booksource: Netgalley in exchange for review

[Ron · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this without reservation. Yes, it's in the characters, but I almost always find myself saying those words. Some books are long, and with those the path may meander, or introduce a host of other people that fill up the pages. This book is short though, and so it begins near a fast-moving end. For depth, we're shown snippets of Jack's past by memory, like meeting the foster mother who would give what he most needed, but also give the freedom to let Jack choose his own path. His mistakes are so readily worn for us to see, but it's what inside that matters at the end.

There's another major character I did not mention, and a point of intersection that at first felt a little convenient. After a few pages it no longer bothered me, because what came of it added to more.

[Marialyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

Life has not been kind to Jack Boucher. Abandoned as a small child, left at a Salvation Army droop off center, Jack had traveled from one foster home to the next until he winds up with Maryann who is a lesbian and shunned by the town they live in. Jack becomes a fighter, using his fists to battle all his demons. Jack has one more fight he needs to do but at fifty plus years old can he possibly be successful and not be killed in the coming battle?

He is compelled to fight this one last battle. He is in debt to Big Mamma Sweet, a leader of the vices people at times flock to in the Mississippi delta. Maryann is in a nursing home, a victim to sickness and Alheimer's. Her home, a place where Jack has found love and acceptance, is going into auction and Jack desperately wants to bring Maryann home to die in peace in the place they both love.

Told with compassion and a beautifully sculptured prose, Smith has created a novel that impacts those who want to understand the various directions people choose in order to survive. It is a gritty tome, but one that does in the end offer solace and a possibility for redemption.

Thanks extended to my local library which did purchase this novel for its patrons to read and enjoy.

[Cathrine ☯️ · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 + 🥊 🥊 🥊 🥊
Jack is a used up cage fighter severely down on his luck facing one more go around in the pit of just-shoot-me-now. Annette with her extraordinary body-as-canvass-on-display is on her own facing down the loneliness of having no one here or there or anywhere.
They both come from nowhere but are about to end up somewhere in the holy church of coincidence.
The hawk, considered by some to be a messenger of insight, adaptability, openness, guardianship, visionary power, and perhaps the divine, is foreshadowing changes to come.

The 239 page count was a huge disappointment. But the author is excused and forgiven because what we have here is quality over quantity where every paragraph counts. Once again Michael Farris Smith takes his fans on a fast, perilous, and desperate ride and we like it. Excuse me as I wipe the drying saliva streaks off my face and ponder a spirit animal tattoo and my lack of scar tissue.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scrambled brain and pain on toast, anyone?

That’s the breakfast you’ll get here, I guarantee you. Pretty gross, huh? If you still want to hang out with a serious down-and-outer, for sure pick up this gem of a book. On the other hand, if you prefer to jump out of the car and head for some sunshine, I hear you.

In fact, I wanted to take off. I wanted to walk out of the dirt and blood and bruises in Mississippi and saunter into a swanky coffee shop in NYC. Instead I was stuck in the trunk, a captive audience. I couldn’t get out, and I couldn’t stop reading. Amazingly, there’s only a little violence, which is at the end of the book. I’m a wimp, so believe me when I say that violence isn’t a big part of this story. The dirt and blood and bruises are just what appear on the character’s face and body.

Gritty, grim, and grimy, this book takes you into the life of one sad, intense, and broken dude named Jack Boucher (boo-shay). Wow does Smith know how to create a character. You see Jack, you smell Jack, you feel for Jack—he’s in your face and in your soul. You’re stuck with him. Because he’s so beaten up and pathetic, he’s not particularly pleasant to be around. I mean, you won’t be ordering a nice meal with him, and he’s sure as hell not going to make you laugh (more like make you cry.) One good thing, though—he’s a nice guy. He has messed up his life, sure, but he doesn’t have a mean bone in his bruised body. You will be rooting for this guy big time.

Jack was abandoned at the door of a Salvation Army store when he was a toddler. He was raised by a woman whom he loves dearly, but who is now in a nursing home. He’s a boxer, a pill junkie, and he’s in bigtime debt. The story also involves a seriously tattooed female, Annette, who works in a circus and believes in a “church of coincidences.” There’s an envelope full of money, and a wicked loan shark of a woman named Big Mamma Sweet (oh, she’s nasty—and scary). Be ready to suspend disbelief because there is a giant coincidence. I liked the story so much I ignored the implausibility and went with the flow.

I hate boxing. If I see it in a movie or on TV, I have to close my eyes and click Mute until my co-watcher tells me they’ve stopped hammering each other. Otherwise, I feel like I’m getting punched in the face, hard. I swear I can almost feel it. Plus the sound effects on a movie are too loud and I think I can hear the brains splattering around inside the head! I worry about bloody teeth and eyeballs falling out, too. So why would I pick up a book about a boxer? Am I nuts? It was only because I loved Smith’s Desperation Road and I saw so many good reviews of this book, that I decided to go for it. There is only one fight in the book and I survived it. One good thing—I didn’t have to listen to the punches making scrambled brain like I do when I watch the big screen. It’s not a book about boxing, it’s a book about Jack.

Speaking of the big screen, the last book I read had a line that completely applies here: Reading a book is like watching TV in your head. Bingo. There has never been a book where that quote applied more. There’s something about the way Smith describes scenes, the way he puts his sentences together, that you feel like you’re right there witnessing the whole thing. Very visual. It’s coming through your eyes as much as it’s coming through your head. I almost want to analyze how words can make your brain see, but I’ll refrain (because I’ll never figure it out; too science-y). Like I felt while reading Desperation Road, here I feel like I’m holding a movie camera and I’m scanning the panorama. This is masterful, since Smith also manages to make you feel the intense emotion in each scene.

But (there’s always a but) I will say that my brain did get tired of turning everything into a movie—the description is non-stop. Actually, for me to like this much description, it has to be something special, and it is. I just needed there to be a little more dialogue punctuating the long descriptions. A little here, a little there, just to give my brain a rest from looking looking looking. Luckily, the prose is sort of stream-of-consciousness, which I always like when it’s done well. In the middle of a sentence, he’ll sometimes change voices, and it works like crazy—those were some of my favorite sentences.

I’m not crazy about the title—it alone made me hesitate to pick up the book. I don’t like physical conflict, and a book that’s called “The Fighter” is sure to be about conflict, or about boxing, which of course it is.

And the cover, gawd. It’s awful. The scene of a fire in the distance has nothing to do with the book, and worse, the lettering and the font are all wrong. And all caps?—please, no! Some text is too small and it’s hard to read. I’m guessing that the cover is supposed to look like the front page of a newspaper? The text reminded me of a calendar where the days are crossed off with a Sharpie pen—just too black and glaring and depressing and sloppy. Smith needs a new book designer. I don’t like looking at the cover—at all. It’s times like this that I especially love having the book on Kindle.

All the basics of a good book are here. Besides drawing me in with its insightful character study and its beauteous language, the book also has a good plot and good pacing. I’m a fan of this author and will continue to gobble up his fiction.

[Andrew Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack Boucher is a fighter, or rather he was a fighter. He’d scraped a living by entering money bouts in the back roads of the Mississippi Delta. These fights were of the most brutal and unforgiving kind, where there is nothing but air between fists and faces. But failure to recognise a concussion after a particularly vicious encounter had him returning to the cage for another fight too soon, with damaging consequences. Recurring headaches and an addiction to pain pills resulted, and his memory recall is now shot to hell. So bad is his inability to summon up events and people from his past that he’s now taken to writing down the names of his friends and enemies together with other prompts in a notebook he carried with him at all times.

As a child, Jack had been abandoned outside a Salvation Army second-hand store, and in the years that followed, he had bounced around the foster care system. He finally got lucky when he was taken in by the one person in his life who has shown him love. Maryann lived in a nice house with some land but had created an isolated lifestyle for reasons we are to later discover. Jack’s time there was a happy one but at age seventeen he knew what he wanted to do and instead of pursuing further study, as Maryann wanted him to, he left to make a living as a bare knuckle fighter.

But things have gone bad, and Jack now owes a large sum of money to a local loan shark called Big Momma Sweet. He’s tried gambling in an attempt to dig himself out of the hole he’s in, but just when his fortune seemed to have taken a turn for the better, his luck has once more turned bad. Could it be that he’s going to have to climb into the cage again? And if he does, given the damage already inflicted upon him, will he survive one more fight?

This story is told in prose that is hard-edged but almost poetic in its lyrical quality. The nearest I’ve come to the rhythm and density of the writing here is perhaps any one of James Lee Burke’s novels, which are also infused with the same sort of intensity and pain. I’ve enjoyed MFS’s writing since I picked up Desperation Road and each time I read another of his books I find myself doubling down on my admiration for him. This is Southern Noir at its finest, a beautifully written story with not a single word out of place.

[Lori Keeton · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 stars

What he found in the lost hours in the motel room was fear. No matter how much he drank or how many pills he took, he could not chase away the idea that he would die in the cage if he had to fight. He feared taking any more blows to the head. He feared how slow his reactions would be if he drugged himself enough to tolerate the blows to the head. He feared where his mind might be if he did make it through the fight and woke up the next morning. Would he even know himself?

Jack Boucher, known as the Butcher in the fighting cages, knows his time inside the cage is up. He’s been living fight to fight for as long as he can remember and now he is ridden with guilt over the poor choices he’s made. He owes money to Big Momma Sweet and he’s 8 days from losing Maryann’s house that belonged to generations of her family. He came to her as a rough and tumble 10-year-old, in and out of foster homes, never knowing his parents or whether he was ever wanted or loved. Who was he? He always wanted to know the answer to this question.

The only one who loved him was sitting in a nursing home in Clarksdale and could no longer recognize his face or his name and he had betrayed her beyond even his own imagination but he had eight days to bring her home.

Now that Maryann, the only mother he has ever known, is near death in the nursing home, Jack’s guilt is overpowering his decisions, and he must do whatever he can to save her home and bring her back to it before the end. But how much is he willing to pay to secure what he dreams of for Maryann?

Just one more fight. But with his headaches, the drugs and alcohol, and the fact that he’s just not as strong as he once was, can Jack survive one more?

When things go awry on his way to pay off debts, one more fight appears to be the only way out. But what will it cost him? When he least expects it, he may have a chance for a reprieve when he meets Annette, a young girl who works as a sideshow act for the traveling carnival. Has fate brought these two together?

But there is a great big world spinning around and sometimes it spins against you. Sometimes it spins with you. And sometimes it spins us right into what we need.

Michael Farris Smith writes with such grit and emotion. He has a way of turning your grimace into a soft cry. He can draw you into a place and cause you to root for his well-crafted characters. He doesn’t mince words and with less than 240 pages, he doesn’t use too many. He gets right to the heart of the matter at a fast pace causing your heart to race from beginning to end.

[Andy Marr · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this one way more than I thought I would.

[Diane Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

"His head fallen against the window pane and his eyes out into the storm and the only thing he knew was that he had once been a boy and then he had become a hitchhiker through his own life".

Sentences like that are what differentiate the great writers from the merely good. Plots like this are the difference between reading when you have time, or letting everything else go to get the time to read. And characters like Maryann, Jack and Annette make you remember a book for a long while. The conclusion is a worthy one, with a last chapter that reads like poetry, if you can see to read through your tears.

I spoke with this author at a book signing, I've read and listened to interviews, I've read three of his novels, and I haven't been disappointed yet. As my friend Laura says, he's the real deal. And as my friend LeAnne points out, this book really is a great tribute to mothers of all kinds.

The Church of Coincidence is a great concept, and one I can enthusiastically get behind.

[Howard · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you, LeAnne, the book is everything you said it was:

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

As I read the book, the late Larry Brown kept running through my mind. He wrote about the same area and the same people in much the same style. I can't think of a greater compliment that I could extend to Smith and this heart breaker of a book. Smith's books have been on my tbr stack for a long time, but this is the first that I have read. It will not be the last.

[CoachJim · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
And cut him 'til he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains.
The Boxer by Paul Simon.

This book gets off to a brutal start, and I mean brutal—like Mississippi Delta brutal. There are beatings, torture, auto accidents, death—albeit a sympathetic death, and lots of pain and suffering. After putting the book down I felt bruised myself, like I needed some of Jack’s blue and red pills.

The book has two parallel story lines that predictably will intersect at some point. As they do the story gets interesting. The main character is Jack and you spend a lot of time with his thoughts. The other character is Annette. She fashions herself as a disciple of the Church of Coincidence. She takes life as it comes and follows whatever path presents itself.

Speaking of coincidences, this is the third consecutive novel I have read that deals with orphans. Here Jack is a “classic” orphan. His parents have abandoned him. Annette can be thought of as another orphan. Although not physically or actually abandoned, her mother has emotionally abandoned her.

There are heartwarming parts to this book. The woman who fosters Jack as a ten-year-old boy can be seen as all that is right in the world. Unlike the parents of Jack and Annette, she gives Jack the roots to grow and the wings to fly, as every parent should. There is also a heartwarming aspect to Jack. He has not grown into a successful man but he loves MaryAnn, the woman who fostered him. Love for one’s family does not cost anything and does not require any accomplishments. Annette herself proves a good listener to the people she encounters, although she has difficulty committing.

The story was intriguing and the characters were very identifiable. The author writes a very taut novel. Occasionally Jack’s thoughts become poetic but the story is told in a very succinct manner.

I found the ending to be satisfying, although I could understand that some readers might not care for it. However, if you read far enough the ending is somewhat predictable.

Whether I read another book by this author will depend upon how quickly the bruises disappear.

[Connie G · Rating 4 out of 5]

Author Michael Farris Smith is a master at writing about desperate people who have been battered by life and scarred by poverty. Set in the Mississippi Delta, Jack is a bare knuckles cage fighter past his prime. The brutal fighting and multiple concussions have left him with a defective memory and constant pain which he alleviates by popping painkillers chased by Wild Turkey.

Jack was abandoned at age two, and was passed around the foster care system. Then he was taken in by his foster mother Maryann, the only person who ever loved him. Now Maryann is dying and Jack is trying to scrape together enough money to save her family home. He must also pay back a large debt to the notorious Big Momma Sweet. When he loses his casino winnings, he's forced to fight one last fight to clear his debt.

Jack's life intersects with Annette, a young carnival worker who is covered with tattoos. Annette is tough but vulnerable, and a possible savior.

I could feel Jack's pain, wondered how much Jack could endure, and felt emotionally exhausted as I turned the last page. Michael Farris Smith's writing is beautiful and lyrical in this dark, intense story which also holds sparks of hope. This is the third book I've read by this author, and his writing never fails to impress me.

Thank you to the publisher for the complimentary copy of the book.

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jack is a renowned cage fighter who has spent his adult life making a living off a sport which nearly kills him. Through bad choices he’s acquired a cash flow problem with some unsavory characters. Well past his prime he finds himself once again thrust into the violent world of underground fighting in order to pay off his debt and keep the beloved home of the person who raised him when no one else would.

The Fighter is a character driven story which emphasises the emotional connection the young and impressionable/pliable have with those in positions of power and influence; that unmistakable bond between child/young person and carer which carries and strengthens through a lifetime.

Rich and compelling, this is a story of full of heart and heartache, strength, determination, and bloody means to an end. The Fighter is very much on the knife edge of noir but has a literary quality too which makes it so good to read.

Punch-drunk Jack, and tattooed enigma Annette, coupled with the homely Maryann, the mother-figure in Jack’s life are characters with great depth and complimentary narratives.

My rating: 5/5. Think Donald Ray Pollock mixed with a little Daniel Woodrell and you’ll gain an appreciation for what The Fighter brings to the table.