The Fighter
Book Review | 📚📚📚📚📚 5/5
Michael Farris Smith (writer) | Little, Brown and Company

Lost and found. Lost and found. Lost and found. With some moments of being lost and lost and found and found and then lost again, in between. You’ve got this. No, you don’t. Almost there; how’d that go for you? Round one. Round two. Round three. I can’t wait for the movie to come out. Because, I know there will be a movie. I kind of had Tom Hardy stuck in my head as protagonist. But who knows.

Why I was interested in this book:
Between my living in Kentucky and my fascination with authentic and grim-yet-hopeful stories of the human condition, this sounded like a ringer.

My assessment:
What a great book. It’s a bit violent. But if the book’s blurb compelled you, like it did me, to want to read it, you shouldn’t be bothered by any of the images the words paint in your head. The journey is as much mental and spiritual as it is physical. That is meant for the reader, as much as the protagonist and other characters. Like most books filed under the genre of Grit Lit, the characters are a mess. Fast-paced with enough detail and dialogue to keep the pages turning, this was perfect.

So well written, with overlapping story lines and subplots, I just wish that the end had a five years after recap of the characters. Or even five months. Or five days. Or five minutes. I wanted more!

Stories of the human condition:
I have never been to a real boxing match. I don’t think the “professional” wrestling matches I’ve seen on TV count. But I have always been drawn to what goes on before entering the ring. What makes someone choose to fight for a living; for others’ entertainment; for survival. This is just one story but paints a realistic and humanistic portrait of the fighting life of one individual. The realities that make up Jack’s character. The dreams that make up Jack’s motivations. The voices that make up Jack’s ego. John Steinbeck would have likely sat ringside just to better get to know Jack, and the other characters in the book. While reading this book, I kept thinking about the saying, “when bad things happen to good people.” Over, and over, and over. And I always cheered Jack on. He’s an everyman, always hoping to not be down for the count.

Disclosure: I received an advanced reader copy of this book from netgalley.com for an honest review. Note that I requested to read it because of its subject matter and because I truly wanted to read it. And I was not disappointed!

TAGS:
#TheFighter #review-book #book review #Michael_Farris_Smith #MichaelFarrisSmith #LittleBrownandCompany #TuggleGrassBlues #Tuggle Grass Reviews #TuggleGrassReviews #NetGalley

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.

I didn’t think I would love this story as much as I did, but I do. A broken man, “a man unable”, fights to find himself, fights for redemption and for that which he loves. In this journey that he takes through a life filled with traumatic body and brain injury, confusion and debt, this fighter finds love and truth in the most unlikely of places. Fabulous story and intriguing characters that bring forth both passion and compassion from its readers.. oh it’s good.

Desperation drips from the pages of Michael Farris Smith’s latest novel, “The Fighter”, but it’s a shot at redemption, and rooting for a character we just can’t let fall, that keeps one committed to this tormented southern gothic.

Mississippi is painted like a fantasy here with Jake Boucher escaping with an envelope of cash through the midnight delta, twisted over which of his enemies to repay first. He’s got a notebook full of names and a bag of red pills to keep his mind straight. A quarter century of bare-knuckle fighting and heavy drinking have finally quieted the demons of his abandoned youth.

In between the then and now of his suffering was a love that drives him forward. His step mother lies in Hospice care, her own mind taken by dementia much as Jake’s butchering of his own finances with gambling and drug debts have left him in this sorry state. He owes 12 large to underworld matriarch Big Momma Sweet, who’s set every bruiser in the delta on Jake’s scent in order to extract revenge.

Smith puts all of this before the reader in the opening pages of the novel and never lets up from there. The prose strikes like a well-timed combo inside a narrative that ebbs and flows like an old school, 15-round title match. We even live with the knowledge that Boucher will die on stage or in the ring if some saving grace isn’t found.

Smith built his career on delivering novels that are often compared to Cormac McCarthy and Larry Brown, with savage landscapes all but consuming characters pushed to the edge of sanity. There’s no shortage of that in “The Fighter”. From the opening pages Boucher, whose name means the butcher in French, is wound so tight down in a pit of despond that one expects him to dissolve or simply give out.

The Wild Turkey and red pills keep Jake going, physically at least, while he struggles for a solution to what torments his mind. He’s hocked his stepmother Maryann’s ancestral estate, hundreds of acres and an old farmhouse, just to stay one step ahead of his debts. The bankers have called his notes, and unless he pays off Big Momma Sweet, it’s all pointless because she will kill him anyway.

It’s the way Smith delivers the backstory of Jake’s troubled childhood, and the way Maryann tried to love him to normalcy, that will keep most readers committed to the story despite its brutality. Smith makes every object count. Every scene will come back to impact the story in the end. Much like a fighter’s training (each day he spends in the gym skipping rope or delivering blows to a weighted bag) will give him the strength to finish, Smith puts down one hint after another, each artfully concealed until its time on stage is required.

Jack "the butcher" Boucher is an aging bare knuckle cage fighter with an addiction to alcohol and red and blue pain pills. He is utterly broken and has to keep a list of friends and foes because his memory is as wasted as him. With a debt to pay to Big Mama Sweet (I couldn't get the image of Mags Bennett from Justified out of my head) and a house in foreclosure he can't lose. For someone who has been a fighter since the beginning, can he last one more to erase his debts?
At times this book, to be read in 1 or 2 sittings, rang slightly hollow (he rages when someone calls him an old man, sometimes to his own downfall), but there was certainly enough action, and compassion, to keep me engaged. Definitely an author I am interested in reading more from and would recommend it for sure to anyone interested in the more desperate sides of human frality.
Although this book is already released thank you to the publisher for providing me with this copy available through netgalley.

The novel The Fighter is so aptly named, for Jack, the subject, has been in a fight his whole life for love, acceptance, and for a very elusive peace. Now at the end of his foster mother's life, his own memory failing from too many punches, Jack tries to right a number of wrongs with only his scribbling in a notebook to identify places, friends or enemies. Smith is a true Southern gothic writer, whose prose brings you in almost against your will; like watching a proverbial train wreck; you can't look away, especially the way this novel twists.

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.

Combination of noir and pulp. Well done and convincing. Gritty, brutal and hard-hitting. Not the usual crime stuff but more of the "country noir" style ala Daniel Woodrell.

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

In the ring with Michael Farris Smith ... a Mountain Times interview

So says Michael Farris Smith during a conversation with Mountain Times: “I think somehow or other, all of my novels are going to be about characters scratching, crawling to get out of the hole they’ve dug themselves.”

And so, enter Jack Boucher, whose scratching and crawling appearance for his main event in “The Fighter” (Little, Brown and Company) offers Smith’s most gritty, most textured, most inspired novel yet.

A tale beautifully told, Smith is a working man’s poet when it comes to prose. The native Mississippian not only has an ear for Southern voices, but a gift to record those voices in concise and cutting strokes that resonate long after the last page is consumed.

Consumed, not read, because “The Fighter” — a story that channels Ernest Hemingway and Tim O’Brien — is about so much more than a busted and aging cage fighter trying to make amends for a life of wasted opportunities.

It’s about you and me and the idea that if anybody, anywhere, gets one final round with redemption, there’s a price to pay — and the purse is the difference between living and dying.

To speak with Smith about “The Fighter,” Mountain Times caught up with the author by phone at his Mississippi home.

To speak with Smith in person, you won’t have to travel that far. The author has two North Carolina tour dates promoting his fourth novel: April 18 at Malaprop’s Bookstore in Asheville and April 19 at Page 158 Books in Wake Forest.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Tom Mayer: Jack Boucher, an aged and broken cage fighter, is a deeply textured, deeply flawed man who reminds me, in so many good ways, of Harry Morgan in Hemingway’s “To Have and Have Not.” By design, by chance or am I off the mark?

Michael Farris Smith: I would say that that was maybe a happy accident to conjure a pretty famous character from literature, especially from someone I admire. The thing for me with Jack is that he snowballed pretty quickly for me when I had the idea of who he might be. I went very quickly from a guy who’s in a lot of physical pain to figuring out why, and deciding he was a fighter and then making him a cage fighter, and them making him an illegal cage fighter. Then, considering the effects of 20 years of bare-knuckle fighting and the lifestyle he may lead. The issues with brain injury and concussion and not being treated. From there going to, well, how is he treated. And, the opioid crisis pops into my head and he’s probably swallowing pain pills pretty often just to keep himself getting up and through the day. From that, I went right to the mental and emotional effects this kind of life would have had. He just became this very complex and tragic character for me almost immediately.

TM: In considering Jack, another character references, “the things he carried.” So, let me reference Tim O’Brien, who wrote that “a true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it.”

Would “The Fighter” fit O’Brien’s definition of a “true war story.”

MFS: I think so. That’s such an astounding quote and I haven’t heard it in awhile. In Jack’s world, all bets are off and the issue of what’s moral is a moment-to-moment thing. I never want there to be anything romantic about my stories because that takes away from the reality of the people I’m writing about. To call it a war story is an interesting idea, but it’s also very fitting, too. Jack is at war with himself, and he’s been at war with the world he’s been dropped into since he was an infant. That’s a very interesting way to put it. War with yourself is usually the big one, anyway.

TM: Again, you’ve written a wonderfully layered novel about the possibility, at least, of redemption. What’s driving Boucher — indeed, what drives anyone — toward that need to try to make amends for a lifetime of bad choices and traitorous actions against the one you love most?

MFS: Maybe it’s just my belief in the human spirit. We all make so many mistakes in our lives. Trying to make atonement or turing to make peace is maybe not something that comes to us immediately. Sometimes it takes age, it takes experience. It takes a great amount of courage, sometimes, to fix the things you’ve broken. It may be an idea of God and forgiveness for some. It may be an idea of tranquility of mind for others. But, it’s in all of us, this notion of righting our wrongs or providing grace to ourselves in some way and those around us. We hurt people we love probably more so than anyone else. Those are the things you really have to go and repair. Those are the hardest things to do, and I feel like my characters are always trying to overcome things that they really want to make right.

TM: The literally colorful character of Annette — her body is a storybook of tattoos from head to toe — is one force pushing Jack toward that ideal of redeeming himself. She’s doing it at least partly for selfish reasons, but would you agree that the redemption she witnesses is not the redemption she thought she craved?

MFS: There are parallels between her and Jack. Jack seems to know what he’s after in this moment. Annette is lost, too, but she doesn’t even really know what she’s looking for. But, she’s always looking. Always looking for a sign, but of what? I’m not sure she even knows. But she’s hopeful and she’s searching. She comes to Jack with this notion of redemption but by the time we get to the last scene, she comes to realize that his world is very different from her’s. Redemption takes on a lot of different forms.

TM: I’m intrigued by Annette’s lifelong devotion to the “church of coincidence.” Is so much of life really a result of chance, or is that merely what happens when we fail to direct our own actions? Does that question make sense to you?

MFS: The question makes perfect sense. I have no idea what the answer may be. We all can look back at moments in our lives where something happened that we weren’t happy about. But, we can look back on it now and say, I’m glad that happened or I wouldn’t have met this person or I wouldn’t have been able to do this.

I’ve got a long list of those. My life has been this rambling, wandering series of events that just happened to occur in a way that led me to be the author, person, father and husband I am now. During those times I was heartbroken over those things that happened or didn’t understand why they happened, but now I’m thankful they happened. It is fate, or is it chance? I don’t know. In times of hardship, we look for signs to get us through. My favorite thing about Annette is this theology she’s devised for herself. Annette is a good example of someone who has that very much in the forefront of her consciousness.

TM: You write impossibly beautiful sentences and metaphors that echo seminal wordsmiths such as Ron Rash, David Joy and Cormac McCarthy. “Leaving the child in the dustcloud of abandonment” as you describe a very young Boucher being left on his own, or writing about the “invisible cloud of pain that draped and held him like some migrant soul in search of home,” are a couple of examples. I’m sure you’ve heard this before?

MFS: It’s an evolution of me as an artist, a writer, a person. It’s a combination of reading Cormac McCarthy and (William) Faulkner and Carson McCullers and everyone else whose had an impact on me. It’s an effect of the gospel music I listened to growing up. You know my dad was a preacher and the lyricism of that got into me and has something to do with the way the words come out. It’s nothing I’m conscious of when I sit down to work; it’s just trying to write the best sentence.

TM: Anything I missed you want to touch on today?

MFS: You know, a lot has been said about the nature of the book, and the violence and the darkness, but, I swear, it feels to me hopeful. I feel that everyone I’ve written is a very hopeful novel.

There’s something very personal to me about this novel that I haven’t been able to put my finger on. I think it’s the wandering nature of Jack and Annette and Maryann (Jack’s adoptive mother) and not knowing where you belong.

I moved around a lot as a kid. That restlessness was in me as a teenager and young adult. Those emotions really came out of this book in my relationship with the characters. I believe the relationship between Jack and Maryann may be the most tender I’ve ever written.

Tom: And I can’t let you go without asking, “What’s next?”

MFS: Much like I wrote “The Fighter” while I was waiting on “Desperation Road” to come out, I happened to have an idea for something new. And so, I worked pretty hard to get a draft of that done before “The Fighter” was released. So, I’ll have something new and we should see it next year.

"He shoved the bag and it swung at him and he dodged and countered. The skin of his knuckles breaking as he grunted and gasped and ignored the throbbing behind his eyes..... Sweat dripped from the tip of his nose and his heartbeat hurried in quick, hard thumps. He grabbed his chest and then he made a fist and punched himself in the forehead."

Jack Boucher was a bare knuckle fighter until too many fights led him to memory loss and an addiction to pain killers. He is now in his 40s and is scrambling to pay off his debt to Big Momma Sweet who runs vice operations in the Mississippi Delta. He loses the payment money when he is robbed and now he might also lose the house of his dying foster mother unless he agrees to one last fight.

I am going to have to accept the fact that this author and I just don't mesh. This was my second attempt to read one of his books. Perhaps there is too much testosterone-fueled idiocy for me. The writing in this grit lit was fine, in a sweaty, violent, hyper-masculine way, but the story bored me. The "one last fight" theme is such a cliché. I also was not drawn to the story of Annette, the tattooed stripper/carnival worker/savior and the convenient coincidence of her appearance to Jack. I thought this book was just OK.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

As a reader, I'm in love with Michael Farris Smith. I'm also afraid of him. Smith is at the top of his game with "The Fighter." As with his other novels, he takes readers to an emotional place in "The Fighter." It's a place filled with darkness, danger, yet one rimmed with light. Jack Boucher, known in fight rings as The Butcher, is in pain. His body is broken, and his heart is empty. As he travels through the Mississippi Delta, he only wants to make things right for his adoptive mom. But nothing comes easy as his past races after him. Gambling debts, crippling aches and pains, homestead foreclosure, family dysfunction and more follow him like a starving dog on an lonely road.

Once again Michael Farris Smith weaves a tale written in the graceful brushstrokes of poetry. Smith’s 2017 novel, DESPERATION ROAD, was my first experience with the author and forged what I hope is a lifelong opportunity to read his wonderful writing. As I’ve previously pointed out, I love Smith’s stylistic creativity (beautifully winding sentences with clauses connected by nothing more than a simple “and”; dialogue written directly into the narrative), but what I enjoy most about his work is his ability to plumb the depths of his characters in a way that lends them a feel of verisimilitude enough to convince you, the reader, that they are standing right next to you. In THE FIGHTER, we have Jack--the longtime pugilist referenced by the title--the dying woman who raised him, and Annette, a tattoo-covered whirlwind who breezes into Jack’s life in the most unexpected of ways. Ostensibly, Jack is fighting both time and some personal demons. Those demons have made his hold on his mother’s homestead tenuous, jeopardizing his desire that she die in her own bed. In addition, Jack owes a large sum of money to Big Mama Sweet, a giant of a woman with a penchant for violence. Jack’s journey reminds me, fittingly, as Smith is a master of Southern fiction, of the phrase “tough row to hoe.” This is a tender, heartbreaking, lyrical, and intense excursion into the heart of darkness. What makes Michael Farris Smith an astonishing writer is his ability to braid just enough light into that darkness to make readers believe that hope does exist for us all.

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

Published by Little, Brown & Co./Lee Boudreaux Books on March 20, 2018

Life is full of improbable coincidences. So is The Fighter, a novel that depends on two or three huge coincidences of time and place and circumstance to bring the story together. Some readers might chalk those circumstances up to fate, particularly in light of the novel’s religious imagery and express references to angels, saviors, and prayer. I’m not much of a believer in fate, and I have criticized other novels for an overreliance on coincidence, but I’m giving The Fighter a pass. Why? Because I enjoyed the story, and in the end, that’s all that matters.

Jack Boucher is a cage fighter and a gambler. He owes money to Big Momma Sweet. That isn’t good. She puts men in the ground who don’t pay their debts. Jack also needs money to stop a foreclosure and to get a former foster mother out of a nursing home. She suffers from dementia but she’s the only person in his life he cares about, the only family he has. Jack might also be suffering from dementia, or some form brain damage that has robbed him of his memories, a likely consequence of being kicked in the head too many times.

Jack’s struggle to get out of debt, to get his life back on track, to do something for his foster mother before he dies, is sad because it seems so futile. In the story’s opening chapters, it seems clear that Jack, while well-intentioned, has little control over his life. Even if he can break out of the daze caused by his pain pills, it isn’t clear how he will overcome the cumulative impact of his bad choices before he loses his foster mother’s home to foreclosure. It isn’t even clear that he will outlive his foster mother, who may be entering her last days.

A former stripper named Annette enters the story while she’s traveling with a carnival, working as the tattooed girl. Annette’s life intersects with Jack’s in ways she doesn’t immediately understand. I won’t say much about Annette because revealing her story would spoil the coincidental surprises. I can say that, as a character, she has the right combination of damage and heart and toughness to make her appealing (although no fictional stripper has ever been created who wasn’t appealing). The same combination of damage and heart and toughness animates Jack, but he’s also appealing because he takes comfort in being who he is. He hasn’t lived a life most people would want, but he has lived the life he wanted.

The novel reveals secrets that Jack never suspected his foster mother was carrying. It builds tension as it moves toward a climax involving the possibility of one last fight, a fight that Jack might not survive. The ending could have gone in either direction, a fact that maintains suspense as the story reaches its climax. As was true of Michael Farris Smith’s Desperation Road, the humanity of the novel’s desperate and damaged characters shines through, conveyed by prose that manages to be both intense and understated.

RECOMMENDED

With The Fighter, Michael Farris Smith steps in the heavyweight category among southern writers.Sentence for Sentence, there won't be a whole lot of novels coming out in 2018 that'll be able to hold their grounds when facing this novel.

With The Fighter, Michael Farris Smith steps in the heavyweight category among southern writers.Sentence for Sentence, there won't be a whole lot of novels coming out in 2018 that'll be able to hold their grounds when facing this novel.

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

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.

I'm 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, 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!