Thicket: 9780316188449: Lansdale, Joe R.

In The Thicket, award-winning novelist Joe R.

Lansdale lets loose like never before, in a rip-roaring adventure set at the dark dawn of the East Texas oil boom, the perfect introduction to an acclaimed writer whose work has been called "as funny and frightening as anything that could have been dreamed up by the Brothers Grimm -- or Mark Twain" (New York Times Book Review) Jack Parker thought he'd already seen his fair share of tragedy.

His grandmother was killed in a farm accident when he was barely five years old.

His parents have just succumbed to the smallpox epidemic sweeping turn-of-the-century East Texas -- orphaning him and his younger sister, Lula.