Sentimental, Heartbroken Rednecks - by Greg Bottoms (Paperback)

About the Book

Noted as one of "Esquire's" top five books of 2000, this collection of powerful stories offers deeply etched portraits of a group of disparate people in the Shenandoah Valley who evoke an impressive geography of the land and the heart.

Book Synopsis

Provocatively blurring the lines between autobiography, short fiction, and essay, Greg Bottoms presents a series of fifteen honest and beautifully spare tales of class, poverty, violence, and racism set in the margins of the urban and suburban New South.

An ode to Pulitzer-nominee Breece D'J Pancake's life and untimely death, the title story deftly interweaves Bottoms's personal history to insightful result. In the transformative "The Metaphor," the narrator proclaims, "when the world looks like every little promise has been lanced and bled out, you need a story to tell yourself." So we move seamlessly between the lives of people both real and imagined and the life of the author, and what emerges is not only a composite of sharply drawn and revealing moments, but also a book-length meditation on the nature of, and necessity for, storytelling itself. Including three new stories -- "Sam at the Gun Show," "Strangers and Dreams," and "Heroism #2" -- this revised edition announces an understated, arresting new voice in literature.

About the Author

An essayist, memoirist, critic, and story writer, Greg Bottoms is the author of The Colorful Apocalypse, Fight Scenes, and more. He teaches creative writing at the University of Vermont.