Staff Pick
In a nameless Midwestern town peppered with drug addicts and confederate flags, 17-year-old Riggle has a week's suspension to find his uncle or come up with $800 rent. I absolutely loved the protagonist's voice: sarcastic yet devastating, disillusioned yet hopeful, and honest to a fault. Recommended By Alice G., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
During a week-long suspension from school, a teenage transplant to impoverished rural Indiana searches for a job, the whereabouts of his vanished drug-addicted guardian, and meaning in the America of the Trump years. Seventeen-year-old Riggle is living in rural Indiana with his uncle and uncle's girlfriend after the death of both of his parents. Now his uncle has gone missing, probably on a drug binge. It's Monday, and $800 in rent is due Friday. Riggle, who's been suspended from school, has to either find his uncle or get the money together himself. His mission exposes him to a motley group of Opioid locals--encounters by turns perplexing, harrowing, and heartening. Meanwhile, Riggle marks each day by remembering the mythology his late mother invented for him about how the days got their names.
With amazing directness and insight, Carr explores what it's like to be a high school kid in in the age of Trump, a time of economic inequality, addiction, confederate flags, and mass shootings. A work of empathy and insight, Opioid, Indiana pierces to the heart of our moment through an unforgettable protagonist.
Synopsis
"Full of gorgeous language and wild insights."--Nick Flynn Set in the beleaguered heart of Indiana's opioid crisis, Brian Allen Carr's timely and tender novel about a teen struggling to find his place in the world--and come up with $800 rent--is at once a moving rumination on the hopeful power of story and a harrowing insight into modern America. It is a book you won't soon forget.
Seventeen-year-old Riggle is living in rural Indiana with his uncle and uncle's girlfriend after the death of his parents. Now his uncle is missing, probably on a drug binge. It's Monday, and $800 in rent is due Friday. Riggle, who's been suspended from school, has to either find his uncle or get the money together himself. His mission exposes him to a motley group of Opioid locals--encounters by turns perplexing, harrowing, and heartening.
With empathy and insight, Carr explores what it's like to be a high school kid in the age of Trump--a time of economic inequality, addiction, Confederate flags, and mass shootings. Through the voice of its unforgettable protagonist--charismatic, confused, searching, by turns cynical and na ve, wise and impulsive--Opioid, Indiana pierces to the heart of our moment.