02825cam a22003373u 4500 76287 UtSlPG 20260610134751.0 m cr n 260607r20251889utu|||||o|||||||||||||| d 07031841 UtSlPG en iso639-1 PS Craddock, Charles Egbert, 1850-1922 The despot of Broomsedge Cove Salt Lake City, UT : Project Gutenberg, 2025 1 online resource : multiple file formats text txt rdacontent computer c rdamedia online resource cr rdacarrier Release date is 2025-06-14 Peter Becker and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive) The despot of Broomsedge Cove by Charles Egbert Craddock is a novel written in the late 19th century. Set in the Great Smoky Mountains, it explores a tight-knit Appalachian community caught between religious fervor, frontier law, and personal vendettas. The story centers on Teck Jepson, a charismatic and overbearing zealot, the embattled constable Eli Strobe and his family, and Jake Baintree, a young man acquitted of a neighbor’s murder but still shadowed by suspicion. The opening of the novel lingers on the wild grandeur of the Smokies and introduces Teck Jepson, who merges Old Testament drama with local life and harbors a relentless conviction that Jake Baintree killed Samuel Keale. After tense exchanges with constable Eli Strobe and Ben Bowles, and a glimpse of Bowles’s uneasy household, Jepson wanders into a gorge at night and finds a hat and coat hidden behind a split rock—garments he believes belonged to the missing Keale. At a river baptism soon after, Jepson publicly brandishes the items and denounces Baintree, prompting the parson to refuse baptism until a confession is made, as thunder and rain scatter the crowd. In the storm’s aftermath, Jepson shelters under a cliff with Eli Strobe’s daughters, Marcella and Isabel; their wary, lively talk reveals Marcella’s worry over her father’s reelection and his principled defense of the court’s verdict, while Jepson insists Eli’s stance will cost him votes. The section closes with hints of Baintree’s odd, subdued behavior since jail and the community’s simmering conflict over guilt, grace, and power. (This is an automatically generated summary.) Originally published: Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1889 Mountain life -- Fiction Tennessee -- Fiction https://archive.org/details/despotofbroomsed00craduoft https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76287 117012 117012