The Devil's Backbone

Readers . . . will find themselves entirely transported to a time and place as lyrically surreal as it can be chillingly real. ~Texas Monthly

With his keen ear for language and knowledge of the era, Wittliff employs a vernacular as rich and colorful as Brer Rabbit’s Southern dialect or Huck Finn’s Mississippi Valley argot . . . The readers are rewarded with a lively, almost musical tale. ~Austin American-Statesman

This lively story, part novel and part yarn, is a fine read! ~Larry McMurtry

Unforgettable . . . hypnotic language, memorable characters, sly humor, deep wisdom, and fun to read. . . . I for one would keep company with Wittliff as long as he’d let me ride along. ~William Broyles, founding editor of Texas Monthly and screenwriter on Cast Away, Apollo 13, and Polar Express

Bill Wittliff’s The Devil’s Backbone is a wonderful tale that does honor to the ancient art of storytelling. It is destined to be an American classic. ~Jim Harrison

Charming and vastly entertaining . . . executed with skill, deft humor, and a fascinating Texas storyteller’s voice in perfect pitch. . . . It will interest readers just as Mark Twain did, for there is a wry, winking quality to the book, and the author is completely in control of all his materials. ~Ron Hansen

A moving and compelling novel, told in a voice as original as any I’ve encountered in recent American fiction. . . . The book’s frontier naturalism and its mystical resonance seem perfectly fused. It’s as if Charles Portis and Gabriel García Márquez had collaborated on True Grit. ~Stephen Harrigan