Burl Spoon returns

By Steve Weddle

The year 2025 opens with a bang, as THEY ALL FALL THE SAME, Wes Browne's wonderful follow-up to HILLBILLY HUSTLE, drops January 7.

Cannabis kingpin Burl Spoon has reigned over the Jackson County area for three decades, building a powerful backwoods empire. But behind a well-run organization, his personal life is crumbling–his daughter can’t stay clean; his son has hated him since coming out; and after enduring years of infidelity, his wife is straying too. The only person not on his payroll who still adores him is his six-year-old granddaughter, Chelsea. 

When his daughter overdoses on heroin laced with fentanyl and one of his employees is murdered, Burl’s retaliation against Clovis Begley, the patriarch of the heroin-dealing family involved in both deaths, is inevitable. As Burl’s plan spirals into a firestorm of vengeance that threatens the safety of his granddaughter, his drive for revenge conflicts with his longing for redemption.

On the brink of losing everything, Burl must find a path between retribution and protecting what’s left of his family.

“Browne writes like the smart-talking, card-shuffling, 

bullet-dodging, bourbon-soaked loved child of Ron Rash, 

Elmore Leonard, and the Coen Brothers.”

—Benjamin Percy, author of The Dead Lands

Wes Browne at Noir at the Bar, B'con '24

I met Browne in back of a bar in Nashville, which sounds like the start to an explosive and unapologetic short story. 

Later, I had the chance to read THEY ALL FALL THE SAME, Browne's first from Crooked Lane Books. 

We recently chatted over email about the new book and how it grew from 2020's HILLBILLY HUSTLE, published by West Virginia University Press. We also discussed good bad guys, bad bad guys, heroin, dialog, and Ben Percy. Buckle up.

Steve Weddle: How long have you been living with Burl Spoon? What's his pull on you?

Wes Browne: I conceived Burl Spoon as a side character in a novel writing class at the Appalachian Writers’ Workshop in 2014. I sketched out something like six characters that week and he was one of the more peripheral ones. Burl wound up being a side character in my debut novel HILLBILLY HUSTLE. I pretty quickly noticed that people who loved that book tended to mention Burl early.

I had no interest in revisiting HILLBILLY HUSTLE after it was done. I not only wanted to write something new, but I wanted to write something more serious. Something darker. But I kept thinking about Burl. The dark moments in HILLBILLY HUSTLE that people responded to were all him. So I picked him up and took him out of there and started over with something new that I called SPOON. SPOON wound up becoming THEY ALL FALL THE SAME. When my agent signed me after reading the SPOON manuscript she had no idea Burl appeared in another book. It’s that self-contained.

I’ve practiced criminal law for twenty five years, and I’ve seen people do a lot of bad things. I’ve seen very few who didn’t have some good in them. That’s the pull of writing Burl. To make that case to readers. Burl’s objectively not a good person, but there are good qualities hidden within him. He’s capable of love. He’s capable of empathy. The rare instances when it comes out, it’s other characters in the book who draw it out of him. Walking that tightrope of constantly reminding readers of who they’re dealing with, and getting them to stay with him anyway, is the whole trick. That’s what I find most satisfying.

SW: You seem to have set up a family war between the Spoon family and the Begley family here. Aside from marijuana versus heroin, how do these families differ? How are they the same? Why root for one over the other?

WB: Clovis Begley and Burl Spoon are two versions of the same thing. Both fancy themselves family men, but one key difference is that Clovis’s family fear him to the point they’ll do almost anything he says, and Burl’s family have ceased to obey him. In Burl’s world, his family are the only people who don’t, and he struggles with it. It’s the erosion of Burl’s family that ultimately begins to undo him.

Heroin and marijuana are also somewhat representative of who Clovis and Burl are at heart. Clovis knows how destructive heroin is, but as long as it benefits him, he doesn’t care. Burl, on the other hand, doesn’t look to hurt people if he doesn’t have to, and he regards cannabis as harmless. Burl’s more than willing to resort to violence, but if he does, it’s going to be calculated, and it’s going to be targeted. It’s Clovis’s total indifference to the wellbeing of others—and specifically Burl’s daughter—that incites the conflict in this book.

SW: How important is it that you get the setting "right"? Would you move a courthouse across the street if the story demanded it?

WB: I choose to write about real places—mostly in Kentucky—and that creates the burden of being accurate. I visit my locations in person if I can, and on Google maps if I can’t. I know that many of the people who read what I write are going to know the places, and I hate for them to call bullshit. That said, if you look very closely, I might make small concessions if it serves the story. For instance, Greens Crossing is a real place in Madison County, but the fictional Begley Turfgrass Sod Co. is wedged into a place that kind of defies the real map. Burl’s farm is similar. It’s funny that you mention a courthouse. The old courthouse in McKee, Kentucky sits across the street from the new one, but I have been known to gloss over that fact.

SW: THEY ALL FALL THE SAME has been sold as "perfect for fans of S.A. Cosby and Eli Cranor." The gritty, southern crime fiction connection there is clear, but what else does this book share with their work? And how is it different?

WB: It’s funny that you ask that because I think about it a lot as the book release gets close. It’s nice from a marketing perspective for things like that to be said about your book, but it also sets up some pretty difficult expectations to meet. Some people are hyper-critical because they read “perfect for fans of” as “the same as,” which doesn’t make a lot of sense, because those are two different authors and their books aren’t the same. What it’s really saying is, “If you like Snickers bars and Kit Kats, you might also like Twix.” I embrace the comparisons because I admire the hell out of both of them. If I’m even in their ballpark, I’m happy. I have a whole lot of influences, and those two are definitely among them, but I’m striving to be the best me I can be, and tell the kinds of stories I like to read.

I do think one thing our books share, aside from Southerness and grit, is depth of characters, attention to setting, and nuanced storytelling. I think we all try to write multi-faceted, realistic characters, and we strive to be genuine with regional dialogue, and human nature. Another similarity is the story momentum. There are necessary ebbs and flows in the action, but both of those two grab hold of readers and don’t let go. I try to do the same.

As far as being different, there’s only one S.A. Cosby in a whole lot of ways, but I’ve specifically been told my writing isn’t as funny as his, and I’m sure that’s true. Especially this book. However, when I am funny, I tend to be very dry. There are a few deadpan lines in THEY ALL FALL THE SAME that I find hilarious.

I think Eli is a good bit more complex in style than me. He’s more lyrical and weaves more nuanced phrases. There’s also traces of what I’d almost call mysticism in his work. I’m pretty cut and dry. I’m not as spare as Elmore Leonard, but there’s some of his influence in my style.

SW: Chris Offutt called this novel a "high-propulsion narrative." What makes this book move? Why does the reader keep turning pages?

WB: I’ll blame that on two things. My ADHD and Ben Percy. I have a famously short attention span, and I write to hold attention. I also studied for a little bit under Ben Percy, and he changed the way I think about building tension and suspense. I’ve had a bunch of great writing teachers who’ve taught me all kinds of things, but he’s specifically a guru at that.

Not all action has to blow your hair back, and not all tension has to make you clutch the arms of your chair. Some of it hopefully does, but not all of it. Sometimes you just have to tickle the brain into anticipation. I come from a literary background, so I really sweat setting and writing well-rounded characters. So I try to start with that. Because the fact is, you can have all the action you want, but if readers don’t care what happens to the characters, what difference does it make? So you go at a steady pace and let readers keep their breath, you develop your characters, then you get on the gas a little bit. Build action, build tension, create a set piece, pay it off, then slow it back down. Once you’ve cruised for a bit, gradually start building up speed again on the way to the next payoff. Whenever something gripping is in the rear view, be thinking about putting something new on the horizon through the windshield. You do that again and again until you reach that final big set piece. Ideally that’s the peak of a larger arc you’ve been building the whole time.

SW: We already mentioned the Cosby and Cranor feel that people get with your work, but what author has been a surprising influence on you, someone most readers wouldn't expect?

WB: That would be Richard Russo. He writes novels set mostly in the Northeast. They’re character driven books that mix drama and humor. He writes some of the cleverest dialogue you’ll read anywhere. I started reading him in college and I’ve never stopped. I used to write everything in first person, and I haven’t abandoned it, but I started having more success after I read one of his books and decided to change what I was doing. Russo writes what I call voice-heavy third person. I rewrote an entire manuscript from first person into more of his style, and suddenly it worked, and the next thing I know, I published my first book.

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THEY ALL FALL THE SAME

January 7, 2025 

304 pages

Crooked Lane Books

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