Balaam Gimble’s Gumption
Balaam Gimble’s Gumption
By Mike Nichols
John M. Hardy Publishing Company
Winner, Texas Institute of Letters John Bloom Humor Award for the Funniest Texas Book of 2004
Here’s what the critics are saying about Balaam Gimble’s Gumption:
Mike Nichols is “a funny fellow with a considerable gift for telling good stories. Both these qualities are on prime display in his first novel. . . There’s top-notch writing in Balaam Gimble’s Gumption. . .”
–Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Balaam Gimble’s Gumption is “a novel of integrity, with a solid premise, believable characters, and cleverly understated dialogue. Nichols has assembled a host of individuals who gladly live in a place where, when you stop to smell the roses, the noise in the background is that of an armadillo rustling through the underbrush –not the roar of gunfire from the neighbor kid’s video game. All in all, a pretty nice place to spend some time.”
–Fort Worth Weekly
Here’s what other Texas writers are saying about Balaam Gimble’s Gumption:
“In Balaam Gimble, Mike Nichols has created a man after my own heart. Balaam lives in a world most of us can only dream about–with a pet deer named ‘Stilts,’ a hidden cave with healing waters, more Mason jars than a Tennessee still, a mountain of exploding cow chips, and a terrified masseur zipping around central Texas on a riding lawn mower. What else could you want?”
–Kinky Friedman, author of ‘Scuse Me While I Whip This Out
“Mike Nichols takes his readers into worlds they could not otherwise visit and furnishes plenty of laughs along the way.”
–Bud Shrake, author of Blessed McGill and The Borderland
“There aren’t many novels that can make you laugh while simultaneously making you examine your priorities. This one pulls it off with grace–part parable, part satire, and all comedy. Wherever Willoughby, Texas, is, I want to live there. We could use more men like Balaam Gimble.”
–Ben Rehder, author of Flat Crazy, his third Blanco County mystery
