After years spent playing around with the characters, incidents, place names and colloquialisms of the novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD, the process of footnoting the entire novel began with 52 footnotes containing both text and images for Chapter 1. All of this work has been preserved on the blog The DEVIL MAKE A THIRD Commentary. The footnoting will continue but a new endeavor has begun which will be a study guide which will closely follow the story.

"Chapter 1: Buck left the farm when he was eighteen."

The novel DEVIL MAKE A THIRD opens with young Buck Bannon behind the plow "blinded by the sun", with sweat stinging his eyes and burning as it soaked  into the raw places on his neck chafed by the mule's reins but none of that mattered because "he was eighteen  and he was following a mule for the last time." The reader has no idea whether Buck had spontaneously made this momentous decision or whether it was made after careful planning. One thing is for certain, the main thing on Buck's mind is how he's going to tell his Mother he's leaving the old home place forever and moving to the nearby town of Aven.