Powerful, disturbing, and raw-the last in Daniel Woodrell's Ozark trilogy and also his darkest novel, its voices coming straight out of the Missouri hill country that is its setting."Woodrell's South, like his prose, is complex and ironic; it is as beautiful and full of love as it is violent and self-destructive."-The Bloomsbury ReviewIn Daniel Woodrell's fiction, how the world sees you is how you come to see yourself. Failure is built in, and violence, petty crime, and jailtime are the common coin. Shuggie Atkins is a lonely fat boy of thirteen. His mother, Glenda, teases him with her sexual provocations. His father, Red, is a brutal man with a short fuse who mocks and despises his son. Into this mix comes Jimmy Vin Pearce with his shiny green T-Bird and his impeccably smart clothes. It isn't long before he and Glenda begin a torrid affair. What follows is violent, shocking, and completely unpredictable-except that it is totally foreordained.