Tim Gautreaux

Before the First World War, Byron Aldridge led a charmed life as heir apparent to a Pennsylvania timber empire, but he returned from France a different man. He ends up working as a company policeman in a backwoods Louisiana sawmill, where violence seems the only way to keep control. Here, amid the cypress swamps and alligators, his younger brother Randolph assumes charge of the mill and tries to rescue his former idol. As the brothers struggle to understand each other and their wives contend with their own hopes and fears, it is Randolph who starts a feud with the Sicilians who control the whisky and girls, and the future grows fearsome for them all.

Before the First World War, Byron Aldridge led a charmed life as heir apparent to a Pennsylvania timber empire, but he returned from France a different man. He ends up working as a company policeman in a backwoods Louisiana sawmill, where violence seems the only way to keep control. Here, amid the cypress swamps and alligators, his younger brother Randolph assumes charge of the mill and tries to rescue his former idol. As the brothers struggle to understand each other and their wives contend with their own hopes and fears, it is Randolph who starts a feud with the Sicilians who control the whisky and girls, and the future grows fearsome for them all.