Kentucky Straight
Stories
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Kentucky straight is bourbon with no mixer. Kentucky Straight is Kentucky seen without nostalgic gloss. These riveting, often heartbreaking stories, take us through country that is unmapped. They are set in a nameless Appalachian community too small to be called a town, a place where wanting an education is a mark of ungodly arrogance and dowsing for water a legitimate occupation; where hunting is not a sport but a means of survival. These are stories of coal miners and backwoods medicine men, of gamblers and marijuana farmers, tales of real tragedy and unutterable strangeness that convey their sense of place so vividly that we feel its ground rise beneath our feet.
Offutt has received a James Michener Grant and a Kentucky Arts Council Award.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The stories in this debut collection share more than a setting in poor and sparsely populated Kentucky; they share a certainty and frankness of language that renders them powerful. When a young boy's grandfather presents himself after an extended absence, the boy wonders if he should believe that he's his grandfather: ``Grandfathers whittled a lot and taught their grandsons how to fish. Lije was just old.'' Offutt's visual imagery is equally strong and direct. After a man loses a leg in a construction accident and is taken to the hospital, one of his colleagues carries the severed limb around for a while, unsure of what to do with it. Many of the stories center on the isolation underlying social relationships. A pool-playing young man who longs to escape the grim hog farm that is his home is distracted from his game only by his seductive sister, who drunkenly visits strange men in their vans. At a poker game held in a smokehouse, an eager gambler stakes a bet on the size of his penis, and wins, but ends up feeling humiliated anyway. Offutt, who grew up in the Kentucky Appalachians, offers taut stories filled with strained relationships and unarticulated desires; his characters deceive themselves into believing that their lives are simpler than they are.
