THE GREAT STATE OF WEST FLORIDA
by Kent Wascom
The real, brief history of the Republic of West Florida is the inspiration for this gory tale of 21st-century secession.
Wascom continues the saga of the Woolsack family—the subject of his three previous novels, most recently The New Inheritors (2018)—this time in the near future. The Woolsacks have twice attempted and failed to start a breakaway community called West Florida; the idea now belongs to far-right politician Troy Yarbrough, who is close to turning the Florida panhandle into the 51st state. Bearing witness is 13-year-old Rally Woolsack. He’s a bit like Harry Potter, if his father was killed by his mother, who was then killed by Rally’s cousin, the mysterious Destiny. Like Potter, Rally goes to live with his cruel uncle, but his deliverance comes in a firefight that leaves his uncle’s head blown off, blood “seeping all over the blacktop.” Rally’s savior is his father’s brother, Rodney, a professional gunfighter in a U.S. where dueling is legal. Destiny, now known as the Governor, plots a resistance against Troy. There’s an immense amount of information in these 272 pages. Wascom introduces more Woolsacks and Yarbroughs than most readers could keep track of. And there are the history lessons about the Republic of West Florida, environmental degradation, and bomb testing. This leaves little room for Rally, who has attributes (bisexual, fat) but not much of a personality beyond the novel’s narrative voice. That voice, which spans pulp and Southern Gothic registers, can make up for a lot when it’s not too overblown. The pleasure of the novel is in sentences like this one: “Looking out the scarred and road-burnt visor of the racing helmet, she saw everything through a deep red mist, the atmosphere of a planet with gunpowder sands and bloody skies....” Wascom’s novel is not for the faint of heart: There’s sexual abuse, bestiality, torture, and a man’s head “dangl[ing] like a hangnail off his shoulder.”
Bookended by bloodbaths, the novel ends just when it seems the real story has started cooking.