“Brilliant . . . hits you fast and very hard. His driving, uncompromising prose thrusts a light into a nightmarish part of America lesser writers flee. First-class, unforgettable!”—James Dickey
It’s Easter weekend in Macon, Georgia, and Connie Holtzclaw, a goodhearted ex-boxer and small-time loser, dreams of carrying his girlfriend away to a ranch in Montana. His brother Carl, though, has other ideas. He wants a big score, and he persuades Connie to join in a kidnapping—a sure thing, a rich local college kid whose mother will do anything to get him back. For a moment it seems Connie may achieve his dream. Then Tommy Wilson, a murderous gangster, crazy as only a pure American product can be, decides to up the stakes. In this gritty novel of loss, violence, and redemption, a distinguished American poet explores the dark world last seen in the novels of James M. Cain, where death lurks everywhere and a new beginning is always just out of reach.
David Bottoms’s first book, Shooting Rats at the Bibb County Dump, was chosen by Robert Penn Warren as winner of the 1979 Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. He is the author of nine other collections of poetry, two novels, and a book of essays and interviews. His other honors include the Frederick Bock Prize and the Levinson Prize, both from Poetry magazine, and an award in literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Bottoms served for twelve years as poet laureate of Georgia.
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