Set in the fictional town of Tula Springs, Louisiana, the novel concerns middle-aged bachelor Bobby Pickens, the assistant manager of Sunny Boy Bargain Store and his half-brother F.X.

has just been released from Angola Prison and moves in with Bobby, his presence throwing all Bobby's foibles into sharp relief, leading to mistaken identity, romantic entanglement and a nervous breakdown, climaxing in a Christmas Eve party in a cabin on a poisoned swamp.

Robert Penn Warren commented, "...James Wilcox has made a tale that is realistic and fantastic, painfully comic, and, in a strange way, psychologically penetrating….There is no writer exactly like him.

Modern Baptists has been included in Harold Bloom's The Western Canon [1] and listed in GQ's 45th anniversary issue as one of the best works of fiction published in the past 45 years.

In 1998 in U.S. News & World Report Toni Morrison counted Modern Baptists among her three "favorite works by unsung writers."