Book Report: Welcome to the Fallen Paradise

Welcome to the Fallen Paradise
by Dayne Sherman



From the back cover:

Baxter Parish, Louisiana, is a bloody place where family tradition is stronger than the law and pride more valuable than life. Thirty-year-old Jesse Tadlock returns home to claim his inheritance after a peaceful, if not dull, twelve-year Army hitch. With a steady job, a past love back in his life, and his own land, he thinkgs he's outlasted the legacy of violence that has hunted his family.
But the morning after his first night in his new home, a neighbor turns up at his door with a loaded rifle on his arm and a bloodthirsty pit bull in tow. Balem 'Cotton' Moxley says he was born in this house and he'll die there, or Jesse will.
With his Uncle Red pushing him to deal with the threat the old way--meeting fist with blade, bullet with bomb--at odds with his desire for a simple peace, Jesse must find a way to stand up and save his own, even if it means losing everything to the fires of pride.


First paragraphs:

Prologue

The sky was bold, the sun angry. The shade from the live oak was the only defense from the ten o'clock heat. My cousin Murphy Jr. was dead again. He'd died at least a half-dozen times before. He'd tried drinking rubbing alcohol for a dull buzz, Valium and Drano for immediate suicide, jumping from a tree into shallow water for a broken neck, riding bulls stoned, even knocking up Tank Johnson's fifteen-year-old daughter. He was saved every time, thanks to fervent prayer and modern medicine. But this one did the trick. Brakes failed on his Mustang convertible one night, coming down too fast over the Mississippi River Bridge in Baton Rouge. He never checked up. Went right underneath the tractor-trailer. Clipped his head from his neck like a shear pin splitting off a boat prop.