Fastest Draw

SHORTLISTED FOR THE AMERICAN GEMS NOVEL CONTEST. An overheard conversation in a curio store during depression era Georgia, prompts a writer to ask about a rare coin and its designer. Abe Brown an old black man brings the writer back to 1875 Texas, recollecting his escapades with Luke Sprague a super-fast sketch artist inspired by the racial caricatures of Harper’s weekly magazine. Broke and on the run, Luke persuades Abe Brown, the coin seller, to help him get to Washington D.C., where he is required to design a coin; Abe is himself long overdue home in D.C. after a fruitless search for his mother. Snaking their way through the Post-Civil-War South, where both landscape and hearts are scarred with burnt plantation houses and lingering wounds of defeat. The duo is thwarted along the way by forces of nature, other men, and perhaps even the devil himself. 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