A Hanging at Cinder Bottom

A Hanging at Cinder Bottom
Glenn Taylor

From the author of The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart and set in the boom years of the West Virginia coalmining industry, this is an epic story of personal ambition, exile and return, and a grand heist.Keystone, West Virginia, 1910In the hot August rain the townspeople gather to witness the first public hanging in over a decade. At the gallows are none other than poker player, Abe Baach, and his lover, the madam of the town’s brothel, one Goldie Toothman.Abe split town seven years prior and has been playing cards up and down the coast ever since. But when he returns to Keystone to reunite with Goldie and to set the past right, he finds a brother dead and his father's saloon in shambles – and suspects the same men might be responsible for both. Only then, in facing his family's past, does the real swindle begin.

Copyright (#ud1ef196f-0240-5203-ab28-782692272db0)

The Borough Press,

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)

First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2015

Copyright © Glenn Taylor 2015

Cover layout design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2016.

Cover design © Mecob Design Ltd

Cover photographs © Matthias Clamer / Getty Images; CGTextures (wood planks).

Glenn Taylor asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Ebook Edition © July 2015 ISBN: 9780008104825

Source ISBN: 9780008104801

Version 2016-04-22

Dedication (#ud1ef196f-0240-5203-ab28-782692272db0)

This one is for the people of McDowell County, West Virginia, past, present, and future

Cook ovens glare red-eyed upon the darkness

And belch their cinders at the fevered days.

—LOUISE MCNEILL

A man with a guitar laid flat on his lap

And a pocketknife for a slide

Called a song about old Keystone

Where the strumpets and knaves reside

Come all ye fornicators he sang

Come on Death’s Black Train

Ain’t no difference ’tween here and hell

’Cept a creek running ’side the lane

He told the tale of the Kid and the Queen

And he told what came before

The years he gave were wide apart

A season apiece made four

1877’s Fall and Winter ’97

1903 in Spring and Summer 1910

The hell he conjured was so glorious

I found salvation in every sin.

—JENKINJONES CHESTER

Table of Contents

Cover (#ufc8270fe-5abb-5611-8f84-689bb3d58e22)

Title Page (#u1f7acf99-d58d-5688-8654-0a9f90276426)

Copyright (#uc86afd2d-3dc1-5540-b4a6-994899b6c06d)

Dedication (#uba0724f1-67f8-550b-9000-bfb038e37096)

Epigraph (#u1ae9c54f-5b96-5ea0-a394-1d509ec0b55a)

Author’s Note (#ue0eaf6e1-38b1-5936-bda1-6ead23ea66f9)

Summer 1910 (#u86667039-3f5f-5d9c-813d-b8553dc5ac4b)