Synopses & Reviews
Daniel Woodrell has been called "stone brilliant" (James Ellroy); an author whose novels "make you whistle they're so good" (Chicago Tribune). In Tomato Red, his 1998 New York Times Notable Book, now being published in a Plume trade edition, Woodrell brings together a trio of hard-luck souls desperate for that one big break.
All nineteen-year-old Jamalee Merridew wants is a one-way ticket out of West Table, Missouri. What she needs is a plan, one that includes her brother, Jason, a seventeen-year-old boy so pretty that "if your ex had his lips you'd still be married". All Jamalee requires is a car, some cash, and a little muscle. Enter Sammy Barlach, an affable drifter, the kind of person "who should in any circumstances be considered a suspect". The damage this unlikely crew does is mostly to themselves, and Tomato Red shimmers with broken dreams. Discover the writer critics have hailed as a "backcountry Shakespeare" in his most entertaining and adrenaline-fueled novel to date.
Review
"Dan Woodrell does for the Ozarks what Raymond Chandler did for Los Angeles." --Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times
"Dan Woodrell can tell me stories any old time. He can come to my house, pull up a chair on the porch, pour himself a long drink of whatever it is he's fond of, scratch my dog between the ears and let fly. I don't know that I'll let him around my wife and daughter, though, unless he's closely supervised."--Pinckney Benedict, Washington Post
"Give Us a Kiss is a keeper. One of those choice, quirky, written pieces that sometimes makes you whistle because it is so good."--Bill Brashler, Chicago Tribune
"Fast action, a great deal of mayhem and a soup?on of sex. A good read, with salty dialogue, tough-guy prose, quick-sketched characters and sharp, terse imagery."--Robert Houston, The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
I was a kickaround mutt from Blue Knee, Arkansas, on my own slow ramble through sincere poverty and various spellbinding mishaps."That's the voice of Sammy Barlach, one of life's losers who sings the blues with acid sweetness and fated violence--another original from Dan Woodrell.
About the Author
Dan Woodrell is the author of five previous novels: Under the Bright Lights, Woe to Live On (to be filmed by director Ang Lee, adapted by James Shamus), Muscle for the Wing, The Ones You Do, and Give Us a Kiss--a New York Times Notable Book for 1996. He lives in Missouri.