Description:
In the Ozarks, what you are is where you are born. If you're born in Venus Holler, you're not much. For Jamalee Merridew, her hair tomato red from her rage and ambition, Venus Holler just won't cut it. Jamalee sees her brother, Jason, blessed with drop-dead gorgeous looks and the local object of female obsession, as her ticket out of town. But Jason may just be gay, and in the hills and hollows of the Ozarks, that is the most dangerous and courageous thing a man could be.
Enter Sammy Barlach, a loser ex-con passing through a tired nowhere on the way to a fresher nowhere. Jamalee thinks Sammy is just the kind of muscle she and Jason need.
Brief description:
Daniel Woodrell lives in the Missouri Ozarks near the Arkansas state line. His five most recent novels were selected as New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Tomato Red won the PEN West Award for the Novel. Two novels have been adapted as major motion pictures: Woe to Live On, filmed in 1999 by Ang Lee as Ride with the Devil, starring Tobey Maguire and Skeet Ulrich, and Winter's Bone, a 2010 film accepted to the US dramatic competition category at the Sundance Film Festival.
Review Quotes:
A shimmering novel, rich with insight...A pleasure...Zooms on the rocket fuel of Woodrell's explosively original language.
-- "Washington Post Book World"