A Tinker's Damn [Paperback]

Darryl Wimberley (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 2007

In this powerfully affecting novel, Darryl Wimberley explores the relationship between Tink and Carter Buchanan, a father and son whose differences have always been outweighed by a grudging mutual respect and fragile loyalty.

But when a brutal murder and a generations-old feud threaten the tenuous balance of their relationship, Carter must soon decide for himself where--and with whom--he belongs. His is a violent world, mired in corruption and racism, a place more inclined to take an eye for an eye than to turn the other cheek, a place where betrayal can seem a lesser evil.

Until one betrays oneself.

Set in the swamplands and tobacco fields of 1940s Florida, rich in imagery and character, A Tinker's Damn is a forcefully moving novel of revenge, redemption, and the blurred distinction between the two.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

A Depression-era land battle in the Florida panhandle forms the gritty backdrop for Wimberly's evocative coming-of-age novel. At its outset, in 1929, an African-American worker named Saint McGrue dies in a lumber-clearing accident. McGrue's son, Spence, is the best friend of youthful (white) narrator Carter Buchanan, whose father, Tink, owns the mill where Saint worked. Tink has been trying to acquire the land of his arch rival Dave Ogilvie, a tobacco grower who is also the preacher in their small rural town. The rivalry turns acrimonious when Tink plots to take control of Ogilvie's mortgage, and the situation worsens when adolescent Carter takes a romantic interest in Ogilvie's daughter, Julia, who leaves town to pursue a teaching career. Wimberly's previous novels (A Rock and a Hard Place; Dead Man's Bay) are mysteries starring detective Barrett Raines. His auspicious foray into more literary territory also turns on secrets that are gradually revealed. Young Carter is suspended within a web of conflicting loyalties to Tink, to Ogilvie and to Spence. Violence in the community and revelations about Saint McGrue's death add complications and increase suspense. The racial politics of the era take on greater importance, highlighted by local elections and a murder. Wimberly's grasp of storytelling is admirable, as Carter faces a series of moral conflicts, eventually comes to understand the tragic secret his father holds and accepts his own part in the painful past. Agent, Andrew Pope. (Oct.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

From Booklist

Mystery writer Wimberley, author of A Rock and a Hard Place (1999) and Dead Man's Bay (2000), changes genres and publishers, but this story of family loyalty and betrayal also has plenty of action and violence. Tink Buchanan is a hard man, his character forged by childhood deprivation and a lifetime of labor, and he's obsessed with getting back land once in his family but now owned by neighbor Dave Ogilvie. Tink enlists his son, Carter, to help in the quest for the land, but complications arise when Carter, pulled out of college, falls in love with Ogilvie's daughter, Julia. Set in rural northwest Florida in the mid-twentieth century, this seems like a story from earlier times, with its frontier justice, racial hatred, and paucity of modern conveniences. Wimberley intersperses scenes of brutality and murder with a little lovemaking and vivid descriptions of logging and raising tobacco, and his story moves at a good pace, with only regrets at the close. Michele Leber
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Toby Press (April 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592641822
• ISBN-13: 978-1592641826
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,833,604 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Atmospheric Journey Into the Past, December 17, 2000

By 

Paul D. Knott "Paul & Andrea Knott" (Colorado, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Tinker's Damn (Paperback)

"Tinker's Damn" is the story of a man who most readers would consider to be moderately successful in his life. He, his wife and son (from whose point of view the story is told) live in the Depression-era Florida panhandle. They have a house, land, enough to eat, and work. Tinker "Tink" Buchanan, however, doesn't have the one plot of land he feels that is his own; his father had lost their family land when Tink was a child, and Tink's one purpose in life is to make enough to buy the land back. Tink's son, Chance, doesn't understand the cancer in his father's soul, especially after he falls in love with the daughter of his father's enemy. "Tinker's Damn" is a very-well-told story of generational conflict, and its tragedy comes in softly but dramatically. When I finished the book, I literally had to put it in a drawer before going back to look at it again. I understood Chance's life in a way that disturbed me, which is a mark of a great storyteller. Mr. Wimberley has brought a spark of the universal into this small story of a small tragedy. I eagerly look forward to reading more of Mr. Wimberley's work. His is a rare gift.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magnificent!, February 14, 2001

By 

Andrew Ceroni (Colorado Springs, CO) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Tinker's Damn (Paperback)

So seldom, so very rare, to find a contemporary author with the literary ability of Wimberley. If you have not experienced the rough scrub, back country of Florida's panhandle, you will capture it in A TINKER'S DAMN. Your senses will rain down about you in feverish torrents of colors, smells, and imagery, then be gripped in tension as the tale's swelled emotions rip the fabric of the characters' lives. This novel of a father-son relationship searching for common ground moves with crushing impact not unlike Ivan Turgenev's "Fathers and Sons", but vividly more. It draws a reader in like a vacuum and never lets go. A haunting. I read it in three sittings, and struggled in between with a constant pull to return to the pages. Revenge, justice, redemption... all interlaced in a fiery meltdown of the characters' wills, and poured out redefined in the outcomes. Loved it. No need to go out 'Finding Forrester'--he's here among us, in these pages.

5.0 out of 5 stars Wimberley sure can write, January 15, 2012

By 

DebSaid - See all my reviews

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This review is from: A Tinker's Damn (Kindle Edition)

I loved this book and didn't want it to end. It has great pace whilst maintaining attention to detail. The characters and events are credible and moving. Wimberley is a writer in the finest sense of the word. He knows how to turn a phrase without becoming overly rhetorical. Only criticism, some unncessarily exotic vocabulary which makes me think he overuses the thesaurus.