Fastest Draw

Shortlisted for the 2013 American Gems Literary Festival. It’s 1875, the former Confederate states are still scarred with the ruins of burnt plantation houses, bitterness still fills the hearts of many and murderous intentions abound towards the agents of the federal government, the carpetbaggers and their Southern allies the scallywags. A young black man Abe Brown rides through Texas searching for family strikes a deal with a broke but super-quick artist to help him to get to Washington D.C. where he has won a prize to draw a portrait of George Washington for the centenary silver dollar. But a straightforward journey becomes a peril-filled adventure. As they are pursued by bounty hunters and encounter seducers, robbers, fools, and agents of justice, whether appointed by man, God, or the Devil. As they travel through the West and the Deep South, with the promises of riches fading and the threat of death ever looming, on their way northwards. Fastest Draw begins in Depression era Georgia with an old Abe recounting his adventure to a writer. Both a Western and a Southern Gothic the screenplay for Fastest Draw was recommended for the shortlist of the Dublin International film festival. A joy to read, funny, original, vivid in its character, story and its sense of place and time. DIFF