Sentimental, Heartbroken Rednecks: Stories

These powerful new stories offer a deeply etched portrait that cuts straight to the heart of a group of disparate people in the Shenandoah Valley. In prose as deftly crafted as anything by Raymond Carver, John Cheever, or Denis Johnson, Bottoms's characters and situations evoke an impressive geography of the land and the heart. Among the eccentrics, the dreamers, and the marginalized people in these stories, we witness the reverie of a senile old lady; the desperation of a crack-addicted thief; and the elusive world of southern writer Breece D' J Pancake. With compassion and pathos, Bottoms lays bare the soul of these modern inhabitants of an old land.