Join us for a reading and discussion with local author Brett Lovell. Brett's new novel, A Bad and Dangerous Man, is based on the true story of the Hillsville, VA courthouse shootout. In 1911, a young man reignites a bitter political feud when he kisses the wrong girl at a corn shucking in the rural Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. Old grudges collide with corrupt politicians and culminate in a massacre inside of the county courthouse. The authorities blame members of the Allen Clan, a family of fiercely independent outlaws and moonshiners. The Governor of Virginia calls the shootout “the greatest crime in the history of Virginia, perhaps of the United States” and sends the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to lead the manhunt after the sheriff, prosecutor, and judge are murdered in the courtroom. 

“A Bad and Dangerous Man is a taut, gripping novel about a simpler time that isn’t simple at all in the hardscrabble landscape of the Virginia mountains. This debut is packed with all the elements of a great, Southern burner: greed, murder, and an unforgettable cast of moonshiners and outlaws.”
—Scott Blackburn, author of It Dies With You

“In A Bad and Dangerous Man, Lovell weaves an intricate history of outlaws, betrayals, and vengeance, of blood spilled and binding, with the precision of an architect and the grace of a poet.”
—Meagan Lucas, author of Songbirds and Stray Dogs