Country Dark
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
“A smart, rich country noir” from the acclaimed author Kentucky Straight and The Good Brother (Stewart O’Nan, bestselling author of Henry, Himself).
Chris Offutt is an outstanding literary talent, whose work has been called “lean and brilliant” (The New York Times Book Review) and compared by reviewers to Tobias Wolff, Ernest Hemingway, and Raymond Carver. He’s been awarded the Whiting Writers Award for Fiction/Nonfiction and the American Academy of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, among numerous other honors. His first work of fiction in nearly two decades, Country Dark is a taut, compelling novel set in rural Kentucky from the Korean War to 1970.
Tucker, a young veteran, returns from war to work for a bootlegger. He falls in love and starts a family, and while the Tuckers don’t have much, they have the love of their home and each other. But when his family is threatened, Tucker is pushed into violence, which changes everything. The story of people living off the land and by their wits in a backwoods Kentucky world of shine-runners and laborers whose social codes are every bit as nuanced as the British aristocracy, Country Dark is a novel that blends the best of Larry Brown and James M. Cain, with a noose tightening evermore around a man who just wants to protect those he loves. It reintroduces the vital and absolutely distinct voice of Chris Offutt, a voice we’ve been missing for years.
“[A] fine homage to a pocket of the country that’s as beautiful as it is prone to tragedy.”—The Wall Street Journal
“A pleasure all around.”—Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Offutt's exceptional new novel (following his memoir My Father, the Pornographer) brings to light with gritty, heartfelt precision what one character, a social worker, calls the "two Kentuckys, east and west, dirt and blacktop." The book follows Tucker, Kentucky-born and -raised, as he returns home in 1954, a teenager fresh out of the Korean War. On his way, Tucker saves a 14-year-old girl, Rhonda, from being raped by her uncle. Tucker and Rhonda soon marry and set up house in his family's old cabin while Tucker finds work running moonshine across state lines. A decade later, Rhonda has had two miscarriages, as well as given birth to a hydrocephalic boy who wasn't expected to survive infancy, two baby girls who lie listless in some mysterious sedation, and one healthy girl named Jo. While Rhonda and Tucker hope God has a plan, "Rhonda couldn't see what this plan was other than a punishment. She loved the babies... but they were too bad off to love her back." This hard living drives the narrative, each heartbreak matched only by Tucker's steadfast determination to do right by his family. Offutt's prose cuts deep and sharp, but Tucker and Rhonda remain somewhat mechanical, despite the nuance of the language used to describe them. The novel, however, is an undeniable testament to the importance and clarity of Offutt's voice in contemporary American literature.
