Nineteen-year-old Tommy Carver desperately wants to make something of himself, but he's got some mighty tall odds stacked against him - a brutal sharecropper father, a secret love affair with his wealthy landowner's daughter, a step-mother devoid of maternal instincts, and even his own short-tempered, prideful ways. The odds only get worse when Tommy is fingered for murder in this shocking, twisting tale that explores sex, American Indian rituals, simmering race politics in mid-20th century Oklahoma and, of course, crime. and "Sharecropper Hell and " was written and originally released as and "Cropper's Cabin and " by gritty crime novelist Jim Thompson, who often spun his tales from the first-person perspective of the criminal. Stephen King has called Jim Thompson and "my favorite crime novelist-often imitated but never duplicated. and " Chalk Line Books presents and "Sharecropper Hell and " unedited, uncensored, and unexpurgated as it was meant to be read. The Chalk Line Books version of and "Sharecropper Hell and " also features the evocative illustrations of artist Martha Kelly.