When I cracked this book open and read the first page, I was afraid I'd be annoyed and put off by the prose, which was wildly metaphorical, densely literary and wandered on a great deal.

Once I got past the opening, though, and actually met the characters—sixteen-year-old Ree Dolly, her little brothers Sonny and Harold, her mother whose mind is wandering, her best friend Gail—I was sucked into Ree's world of desperation and dogged stubbornness.

Winter is at the door, and the family is subsisting on leftover grits, butter, and the rare, unasked-for charity of their relatives. Then the deputy shows up and drops a bombshell: Ree's father is wanted in court, and he signed all of his property over to cover his bail before he ran. If he doesn't show up next week for his court date, Ree, her little brothers and her young, senile mother will be turned out into the frozen fields.

"I'll find him," Ree promises.

No one around wants her to find him, though none will tell her why, and her father apparently doesn't want to be found, either, but she shoulders on anyway, trekking up and down the Ozark valleys, following the interminable web of Dollys, Bromonts, Boshells; Jessups, Miltons and Haslams: relatives and near-relatives; enemies and friends and co-conspirators to unearth the whereabouts of Jessup Dolly, be he alive or dead, no matter the consequences.

Woodrell's prose grew on me, but it's his ear for dialogue—blunt, plain, forceful, fulminating with repressed emotion—that completely seduced me.

Highly recommended.