Welcome to the Fallen Paradise

By Dayne Sherman

Book Overview

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 Mount Olive to claim his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1931561737
• ISBN13: 9781931561730
• Release Date: January 2004
• Publisher: Macadam Cage Pub
• Length: 248 Pages
• Weight: 1.15 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.3" x 6.5"

Customer Reviews

really good novel with sense of place and people

I liked this a lot, and think it was very well done. I have already told two writers I know about it. It held me all the way through.

An Appreciation of Welcome to the Fallen Paradise

Welcome To The Fallen Paradise by Dayne Sherman is a very good read indeed. It can be experienced on one level simply as a whopping good adventure yarn, and many will see it as little more than that, rather like the James Bond stories of Ian Flemming. Certainly it reads with the same page turning interest and bouncy adventurous charm. It is so well plotted and punctuated with regularly spaced climax that there is much temptation on the part of the casual reader to dig no deeper, and fail to see the book for the rather greater work that it really is. It is that deeper meaning that will be examined in this short note. Other reviewers have outlined the general story progress and (unwilling to spoil the fun) I will not repeat that line of comment, except to say that the book deals with the return from the army of Jessie Tadlock to his home Parish in Southeastern Louisiana. He seeks to set himself up as a peace-loving householder with a beagle inherited from his late Mom. And almost immediately things go horribly wrong. He is mauled over by any number of persons, institutions and power structures, all of whom seem to be hell bent on keeping his naïve innocence from settling in. The book is a study in an almost baroque conflict between multiple power structures as he tries to pick his way through a picaresque path of multiple perils involving (among others) malign religious institutions, uncertain family loyalties, a dangerous law enforcement regime, and an utterly evil antagonist. This sonuvabitch, an unappetising item named Cotton Moxley, who leads Jessie's opposition is one of the most pernicious villains to creep into anglophone fiction since Richard III or Sauron of Mordor. By the time the final climax arrives, the story has built to a truly hypnotic description of "a hundred fighting monkeys in a barrel of darkness." In short, we have a tour between the boards of this book that illustrates why they don't call Jessie's home ground "Bloody Baxter Parish" for nothing. What elevates this two hundred and forty four page novel from being simply another good adventure story, is not only the superb diction of the storyteller, but the clinical dissection of the local anthropology in which (on looking back) we realize that the evil emanating from one depraved nucleus, manages to infect the whole society and particularly the social structures that are supposed to make life worth living in a modern world. But it does take some serious looking back after the adventure part of the read to see the grander scheme at work. You may have to read it twice, a good reason to buy it in hardcover - while the copies last in the first edition. For I promise you the voice of Dayne Sherman will be with the literary chorus for a very long time indeed, and not only will you want to be among his early readers, you will want a first ed on your shelf.

To be Southern or not to be Southern

Jesse Tadlock must leave high school for the army. Ringing foul in his ears is the sentiment that these would be the best days of his life. Big for his age --man size-- Jesse helps his kin to dig his cousin's grave because there is no money to pay for such a luxury. No part of his life is untouched by violence except in the love of his high school sweetheart and the nurturing women of his family. Jesse returns home to Baxter Parish following his Mother's death. He has a job lined up with the Sheriff, a new home bought with money from his mother's life insurance --pretty much all that is left to herald the passage of his Mother's hard life, and real hope of rekindling his romance with his high school girl, the only woman he has truly loved. It seems he is off to a good start and may have the peaceful existence he craves. Then we get a taste of "Cotton" Things get interesting after that. A lot has been said in other reviews about the land and that tie that binds. It is integral, but more central is the dogged will of Jesse and his male family members. They make pit bulls look like kitty cats. The author has drawn his characters well, and crafted a fine story. I could say a lot more about this book. It has a lot of subtle nuances that could get overlooked in all the excitement. Of interest to me, is the incident that causes Jesse to leave high school and join the army and the events that send him after "Cotton" on his own turf. There's some irony there. This book does get inside your head. --NO doubt

Fall into the paradise of great writing

I could not stop reading "Welcome to the Fallen Paradise," so I was sent to the couch (the light bothers my husband). At four-thirty this morning I finished the book and was left feeling as though I had fallen into paradise. The paradise of Dayne Sherman's brillant writing. I fell hard, into Louisiana's Baxter Parish; smack in the middle of Jesse Tadlock's terrifying troubles, his till-death-do-us-part family, and his worried but beautiful heart. All Jesse wants to do is get a job, rekindle his love for his high school sweetheart, and buy some land and a house. But his psychopathic neighbor, Cotton Moxley, only wants Jesse dead. The feud between Moxley and the Tadlock family is rabid, electrifying, and deadly. I highly recommend buying "Welcome to the Fallen Paradise," and then staying up all night to read it. It is well worth a night on the couch.

Welcome to the Fallen Paradise

Dayne Sherman has spun a classic tale of the extent evil men will go over a small plot of land. Land is at the heart of a lot of conflict in the South. Sherman captured this. His setting, Baxter Parish, and the characters are real and frightening. It kept me guessing how far Cotton Moxley would go to drive his new neighbor off the land. I was also faced with how far would I go if someone was trying to drive me from my home. Days after I read the book, I still couldn't get it off my mind. A great read.