Ron Gomez

Neat Ron Gomez

Survivor! Antoine "Neat" Galvez, is born in 1858 at Barataria Bay, Louisiana. He lives 101 years of brutal survival: barely literate, losing his father at age 14, witnessing the ravages of the War Between the States on his bayou home and surroundings and the crushing humiliation of "reconstruction" when Louisiana was the only state in the South still occupied by federal troops. At age 17, he kills a prominent carpetbagger in a gunfight at a Mardi Gras ball, hides out in the swamp for a year before a poisonous snakebite forces him into the hands of the black sheriff. He is tried and acquitted of murder, loses the love of his life in an illegitimate childbirth, travels the Gulf South with a minstrel show, and lives through typhoid and yellow fever epidemics. Throughout his life he is stalked and attacked repeatedly by the son of the man he killed in 1876. Even at his 100th birthday celebration in 1958, his stalker, now 95, confronts him again in an incredible climax. Though fiction, Neat is based on a true life story and historical facts.