Tomato Red

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.