Junior Ray Loveblood, one of the most outrageous and original personalities to appear in American literature in many years, returns in The Yazoo Blues, the sequel to John Pritchard’s Junior Ray. Now semi-retired, Loveblood works as a security guard in one of the floating casinos that have replaced cotton as the cash crop in the Mississippi Delta.

In his spare time, Junior Ray has become obsessed with the ill-fated Yazoo Pass expedition by a Union armada up the Mississippi River in 1863. He relates dual stories, both that of a soldier slowly driven mad by the haunting countryside, and of Loveblood’s friend Mad Owens, whose search for existential love meets its greatest challenge in the arms of the stripper Money Scatters. Loveblood’s conclusions are hilarious, absurd, and at times intensely revealing.

Equally profane and profound, the fictional narrator of Pritchard’s novel illuminates the complex stew of evolving race relations, failed economies, and corrupt politics that define much of the post-civil rights rural Deep South.

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Latest News:
- John Pritchard, Rheta Grimsley Johnson Nominated for Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Awards (March 19, 2009)
- Yazoo Blues Praised in Tunica Times, Delta Magazine (November 20, 2008)
- John Pritchard Talks Literary Bad Boys with TurnRow Books (November 20, 2008)
- Smoke Signals Publishes Yazoo Blues Excerpt (October 31, 2008)
- Fall NewSouth Books Receive Publishers Weekly, Library Journal Starred Reviews (September 25, 2008)
- Junior Ray's The Magic Pussy Makes the News (November 9, 2007)
- Junior Ray Author Responds to New York Times Article, "Are Book Reviewers Out of Print?" (May 7, 2007)
- John Pritchard Reads Yazoo Blues at Tennessee Williams Festival; Excerpt Available (March 27, 2007)
- More on Book Signings, with John Pritchard (June 23, 2006)