Brothers Judd Book Reviews

Review of Come Back Dead (Terence Faherty)

Wed, 25 Feb 2026 00:00:01 EST

Ross Macdonald built something else entirely. There is still an investigation, but the detective does not move from bead to bead, encountering scenes in the moment. Instead, he pulls a thread and unravels a tapestry of lies.

The case begins, but it is not the beginning. The real crime is buried in the past: a switched identity, an abandoned child, a family tragedy long suppressed. Yet the past has been covered up. This is the tapestry. As Lew Archer pulls on its threads, the accumulated damage from one generation to the next becomes visible.

Chandler, the poet who worked behind a desk as an oil executive, brings to mind T.S. Eliot, another poet who worked a day job at Lloyd’s Bank and wrote The Wasteland between drafting financial memos. Yet it is Macdonald who embodies the truth of Eliot’s famous dictum: the past is always present. In our beginning is our end.

This is what makes Macdonald a quiet author. His scenes accumulate meaning. A conversation may appear trivial until it is placed beside another. A casual remark about a missing daughter, a half-forgotten marriage, a name that doesn’t quite fit: details that mean nothing until, pages later, they mean everything. There are no standalone beads.
-Searching for a Unified Theory of Chandler versus Macdonald: The Necklace and the Tapestry (Frank Ladd, 2/20/26, CrimeReads)

While Terence Faherty’s hero, Scott Elliott, has more of the external qualities of Philip Marlowe, this fine mystery ultimately finds its way into Ross MacDonald territory. Scotty is a former actor who now works for a Hollywood security firm. He’s married with kids, unlike Marlowe or Archer, but his romantic nature is reflected most in his love of how the movies and movie-making used to be.

In this installment in the short series he is brought in to protect a director modelled on Orson Welles, who is trying to restore his original cut of a film that is obviously a riff on The Magnificent Ambersons. Someone is sabotaging that attempted restoration and the director - a wunderkind turned flop - is having difficulty raising money. So when an Indiana businessman - whose family company parallels the subject of the movie - offers funding for the production the reshoots move to his company’s town. (Scotty just happens to be an Indianan himself.)

Here the novel shifts as we are introduced to a family haunted by the ghost of hero killed in WWII, a sexy widow, a stern matriarch, Klansmen, a disfigured war veteran, and more. And Scotty begins unravelling the tapestry.

Scotty is a likable lead and ditching the family lets him function as a lone hero for the most part. There’s just the right amount of misdirection, but leavened with enough clues that the resolution feels earned. All in all a fine gloss on the classic private eye story.

Grade: B+

Review of The Hawaiian Cult that raised Tulsi Gabbard (with Christine Gralow) [Podcast] (Christine Gralow)

Sat, 21 Feb 2026 00:00:01 EST

"Tulsi was being groomed for a political position because Chris Butler had political aspirations," Marshall said. "He wanted the influence. It was very unusual because women in Science of Identity aren't really encouraged to do anything."
-ESSAY: Tulsi Gabbard Described as ‘Advanced Devotee’ in Alleged Cult (Nick Mordowanec and Monica Sager, Nov 22, 2024, Newsweek)

I also remember Chris Butler held this larger than life presence in my childhood. Everything I did I had to think about how it benefitted him. He was my parents spiritual master and they looked to him for guidance on everything, from what to eat, to how to raise their children, and they did it all without question. When I talk to people about the lack of questioning, they find that aspect odd. It is odd, but to put it into perspective, I was raised to believe Chris Butler was God’s voice on earth, and if you questioned him or offended him in any way, you were effectively offending God, and because we believed in reincarnation, that meant that you would be reborn as the lowest lifeform imaginable and then have to spend eon’s working your way back into God’s good graces. So questioning the leader was spiritual suicide, which was seen as worse than death. So no-one questioned. Chris Butler also would ridicule the intelligence of anyone he didn’t like, belittling anyone he felt was questioning his authority even slightly. He demanded the utmost dedication and loyalty from his followers and if he didn’t get it, the punishments were swift and severe. I remember hearing stories of people who were told they weren’t allowed to eat because they didn’t make food to his liking, who were not allowed to sleep because there was a light making a buzzing noise in the house, and the follower didn’t have the foresight to fix the issue ahead of time.

Literally everything we did had to go through Chris. If you wanted to work outside of the group, you had to ask his permission. No-one could get married without his consent. From the late 80's all of us kids were removed from public schools because he didn’t want them influencing our minds away from our service to him. So from that point we were home schooled, until there were schools established in the Philippines. After that all the children were sent to the boarding schools there for intensive schooling. From the small pieces of information that made it out of the schools to me, a lot of the kids were traumatised by the environment, as it was almost prison like. Classes were on hygiene and cooking and all the ways that they would need to serve Chris Butler best. It’s only speculation, but I am certain that this was because places like the US and Australia had standards of education that the home schools has to meet, and they just weren’t. They could avoid scrutiny by having the kids in boarding schools in the Philippines. I can’t even imagine how dreadful it was for my friends who got sent there. I was lucky to avoid it. I didn’t avoid the lack of schooling though, and by the time I officially left the Science of Identity Foundation in 1997, just before I turned 20, I had only received up to a 5th grade education.
-ESSAY: An Insiders Perspective on Tulsi Gabbard and her Guru (Lalita, Sep 24, 2017, Medium)

Gabbard's rise in US politics came out of nowhere, and is inexplicable until one considers how Sangh donations gave her a leg up when she was a virtual unknown. The first Indian-American donors to her first congressional campaign-who were also among the first non-Hawaiians to support her-are top executives in RSS affiliates in the United States. Donor names provided in filings to the Federal Election Commission, which I collated with lists from Sangh websites and promotional materials as well as media reports, reveal that hundreds of leaders and members of such groups gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to Gabbard in the formative years of her congressional career. Kallie Keith-Agaran, a Democratic activist in Hawaii, has also compiled a database of Gabbard's donors. Her extensive documentation of their contributions and affiliations closely corroborates my independent findings.

Gabbard emerged on the US political scene at a pivotal moment for the Sangh’s aspiration to see Modi as the Indian prime minister. Since 2002, Modi and the RSS had both grown increasingly controversial in the United States, facing protests by academics as well as censure by the US government. Modi stood accused of complicity in the anti-Muslim pogrom that had taken place in Gujarat, while he was the chief minister of the state. Even by conservative estimates, the pogrom took over a thousand lives. Afterwards, he was denied a visa to the country. The greatest diplomatic triumph for the American Sangh was rehabilitating Modi’s tainted reputation in the United States. Gabbard played a significant part in that project.

There are nearly 4.5 million Indian Americans in the United States. Just over half are Hindu. Fifty percent are registered Democrats, but they tend to shy away from partisanship-especially those who belong to Sangh offshoots. Constituting less than 1.5 percent of the population, Indian Americans are not typically considered a significant voter base. Yet they have emerged as a crucial constituency for Indian politics, given their vast support for Modi at his “rock-star” receptions in New York and California, and his dependence on them for “diaspora diplomacy.”

Amongst Gabbard’s many donors are various members of the US chapters of groups such as the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, the Overseas Friends of the BJP and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America. Thanks to her connection to leading figures of the American Sangh-such as Vijay Pallod, a businessman from Texas; Bharat Barai, an oncologist from the Chicago region; and Mihir Meghani, a physician from California-she has been eagerly welcomed at many Sangh fundraisers around the country.

Even as mainstream interfaith groups refused to participate in events hosted by the American Sangh, Gabbard repeatedly spoke at its events, in the United States and abroad. While organisations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have published reports warning about the spread of Hindu-nationalist violence under Modi’s administration, Gabbard has called India an “indispensable partner” to the United States, and pushed for enhanced cooperation between the two countries. Gabbard's donors have publicly applauded her for supporting Modi before he was elected, for speaking against the US decision to deny him a visa after 2002 and for working against congressional efforts to recognise human-rights violations in India.
-ESSAY: All in the Family: The American Sangh’s affair with Tulsi Gabbard (Pieter Friedrich, 01 August, 2019, Caravan)

This page is less a review than an attempt to marshal links about how bizarre Donald Tump’s Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, is and her links to the Science of Identity cult. I did not find any good books on the topic but recently heard this excellent podcast: The Hawaiian Cult that raised Tulsi Gabbard (with Christine Gralow) (Mission Implausible, Feb 8, 2026). Ms Gralow’s reporting on the subject is unmatched and her experience of harassment by the cultists probably explains why there is not more reporting on this scandalous story.

Grade: B

Review of Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier)

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 00:00:01 EST

-ESSAY: In Praise of Daphne du Maurier (Parul Sehgal, July 6, 2017, NY Times)

In 1937 an Englishwoman - bright and bored and drowning in children - sat down and sketched out a story. “Very roughly, the book will be about the influence of a first wife on a second,” she wrote. “Until wife 2 is haunted day and night … a tragedy is looming very close and crash! Bang! Something happens.”

-ESSAY: Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca taught me how to love literature: I didn’t have high hopes for Rebecca, but I believe it to be the underrated classic of the 20th century (John Crace, 20 Aug 2014, The Guardian)

Then came Rebecca. I had no great hopes for it. As far as I recall, it had a fey-looking heroine on the front - I’m fairly sure I hadn’t read a book written by a woman since I’d stopped reading Enid Blyton - and a strapline that said “Daphne du Maurier’s classic gothic romance”. I didn’t know what a gothic romance was, but it didn’t sound that great. Still, the back cover blurb promised death and intrigue, so it was worth a punt. Better than mooching around aimlessly waiting for the TV schedules to start.

From the opening sentence – “Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again” – to the final – “And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea” – I was hooked. I must have read it all in two sittings; three at most. The characters remained with me – in particular, the one who was never there – long after I stopped reading. Even now, 40 years on, they have still never left me. A while ago, in a fit of extravagance, I bought a signed first edition with a book advance. I told my family it was an investment, but it was really a desire to get as physically close to Rebecca as was possible; to re-experience the book as others had first done in 1938.

I fear I’ve made a terrible mistake. I have never liked Wuthering Heights and, somehow, in my mind it became associated so closely with Rebecca that I’d never bothered reading the latter. Just the classification as a gothic romance made it seem to much of a chick book to be bothered. Obviously, I should have known better, given that Alfred Hitchcock had adapted it for film. Like Mr. Crace, above, I ended up being blown away by it.

There are a number of delicious twists that I won’t give away, in case you’ve avoided it too, but it seems safe to say that one of the main themes is “gaslighting.” The young heroine is rescued from her servitude to a repellent wealthy American woman by the dashing, but solemn, Max de Winter.

De Winter is an object of fascination in high society because of his legendary home, Manderley, and the tragic death of his wife, Rebecca. When the newlyweds return to the manor the new wife finds herself being compared to the old and found wanting. In particular, Rebecca’s maid, Mrs. Danvers, torments the woman she sees as unworthy to inherit the position of her former mistress. The entire novel is suffused not just with the gloom of the prior tragedy but with foreboding for what is to follow. As an exercise in creating an atmosphere, the novel is really unmatched. Come for the dread, stay for the psycho-sexual surprises.

Grade: A

Review of Pay-Off in Blood (Brett Halliday)

Sun, 11 Jan 2026 00:00:01 EST

Shayne debuted in the novel Dividend on Death first published in 1939, written by Dresser as Halliday. Fifty Shayne novels were published in hardcover written by Dresser (until 1958) and a variety of ghost-writers. Twenty-seven more were published as paperback originals for a total of seventy-seven. There are also 300 short stories (although many of these are condensed from, or were expanded into, published novels), a dozen films, radio programs and television shows, and a few comic book appearances that included the character.
-WIKIPEDIA: Michael Shayne

Other recurring characters in the stories are reporter Tim Rourke, Miami Police Chief Will Gentry ( a close friend of Shayne's), Miami Beach Chief of Detectives Peter Painter (a foe of Shayne's), and Shayne's secretary (and occasional romantic interest) Lucy Hamilton.

Michael Shayne stands out from his fictional detective peers primarily due to his professional ineptitude. He is perpetually financially unstable and desperate for any work he can get. A typical story often finds him on the brink of losing his office, or having his furniture repossessed. He is often physically assaulted, and outmaneuvered, which usually results in his embarrassment, especially in the presence of police or other investigators. His frequent misfortunes are largely attributed to his strict ethical code, which prevents him from accepting morally ambiguous cases and the cases he does usually take are desperate clients and wind up being pro bono, leaving him more broke than before. Additionally, his tendency to aid others often leads to regret when those he helps betray him. Despite these setbacks, Shayne manages to maintain a positive reputation based solely on his honesty and integrity. A recurring theme in the narratives surrounding Shayne is his widespread recognition; regardless of his location or the company he keeps, he is invariably known by those around him who are still willing to hire him.
Michael Shayne Mystery Magazine

It’s always fascinating when a writer/character who was so popular for so long eventually goes missing from the culture. Other than Shane Black borrowing from a Mike Shayne plot for his film, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang-and even then it was from a ghostwritten text, not a Brett Halliday novel-this series and its creator have largely been memory-holed.

Fortunately, Kindle has some $1.99 bargains on books in the series, so I grabbed this one. Though it too is from the post-Halliday stretch, it contains most of the elements listed above. The lanky red-head, Mike, is hired-very much against his upright inclinations-to make sure that a doctor’s blackmail payment goes off without a hitch. The victim believes that just the presence of the well-known detective will keep him safe. Of course, hitches ensue and Peter Painter gives Mike a hard time while Tim, Will and Lucy support him in his investigation. It is not revealing too much to say that the client also turns out to be unreliable.

The plot is suitably convoluted until its satisfactory wrap-up. But what I enjoyed most was the characterization of Mike and the period details. A great deal is made of the difference between Miami and Miami Beach. Mike’s drink of choice is cognac, rather than the bourbon we would expect of a hard-boiled dick. And the food choices are jarring, from Mike making himself a one-pound patty of ground beef to him and Lucy ordering stuffed pancakes flambe at a fancy restaurant: stuffed with chicken wings and gizzards.

The old radio show is also worth a listen.

Grade: B

Review of Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (Derrick Bell, Jr)

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:01 EST

Critical race theory (CRT) is an approach to studying U.S. policies and institutions that is most often taught in law schools. Its foundations date back to the 1970s, when law professors including Harvard Law School’s Derrick Bell began exploring how race and racism have shaped American law and society.

The theory rests on the premise that racial bias - intentional or not - is baked into U.S. laws and institutions. Black Americans, for example, are incarcerated at much higher rates than any other racial group, and the theory invites scrutiny of the criminal justice system's role in that.
-ESSAY: Explainer: What 'critical race theory' means and why it's igniting debate (Gabriella Borter, September 22, 2021, Reuters)

First things first; Derrick Bell is a legendary figure in the black Civil Rights movement, but was generally pretty anonymous until the Right got swept up in the racial hysteria surrounding the rise of Barack Obama and his support of Bell. The professor had been a leader in the development of Critical Race Theory and, inevitably, he, Obama and CRT were all caricatured and cast in the worst possible light. But, no reasonable person can read the definition above and deny its truth without completely blinding themself to our fraught racial history and its lingering effects. Just yesterday the Times ran a horrific story about a “time out box” that is used in a school system that is predominantly Native American and only mentions in passing that:

The incident brought renewed attention to the enduring use of restraint and seclusion in education. The practice — which can include putting children in closets, sending them into timeout boxes and locking them in tiny rooms — has been criticized for decades.

But it sometimes remains in use in districts across the United States to manage students’ behavior, and children with disabilities and students of color are disproportionately subjected to it.

Contra the Anti-Woke, these disproportionalities exist in many institutions and we ought always to take them into consideration and seek to eradicate them. Such is the promise of the Founding, that all men are Created equal and that all laws ought apply equally.

As to the argument of this specific text, I’m not naive, but suffice it to say that when I made what is basically the case presented herein, in a Constitutional Law class in 1990, it was not greeted kindly. Then again, I was a conservative white male maintaining that civil rights activists and the Supreme Court had made a mistake, in Brown v. Board of Ed, and should have demanded equality of education rather than an end of separation. It would be one thing if whites had been willing to completely integrate education and equalize that way, but Professor Bell charts the resistance to integration. As importantly, he marshals the statistics to show that black public school students and schools remain largely underfunded compared to most white students and predominantly white schools. No one would deny that the situation has improved since the days of open Jim Crow, but, likewise, one can’t really pretend that there are not still inequities in how we educate students that are simply accepted because of the racial makeup of the least advantaged.

We ought not fool ourselves that black Americans would still have had a fight on their hands to extract the funding to equalize education, but it seems likely that politicians would have preferred to spend money on permitting diversity. Such an arrangement–though obviously indulging racism–could have brought increased salaries for black educators, expenditures on the physical plants in predominantly black neighborhoods and acquisition of more modern educational resources. It is hard to imagine that the outcomes would have been any worse and they might, hopefully, have been much better.

Though there is much else worth considering in the book, this basic statement is its crux:

The danger with our commitment to the principle of racial equality is that it leads us to confuse tactics with principles. The principle of gaining equal educational opportunity for black children was and is right. But our difficulties came when we viewed racial balance and busing as the only means of achieving that goal.[...]

[T]ime proved that the persistent educational gap between black and white students was only indirectly traceable to segregation. Instead, the root of the problem appeared to be the substantial disparities in the resources provided to black students relative to white students. Many, including myself, decided that given the difficulty of integrating black and Latino students with their swiftly fleeing white counterparts, we should concentrate on desegregating the money.
? Derrick Bell, Silent Covenants

Amen, brother.

Grade: B+

Review of Silent Covenants: Brown v. Board of Education and the Unfulfilled Hopes for Racial Reform (Derrick Bell, Jr)

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:01 EST

Critical race theory (CRT) is an approach to studying U.S. policies and institutions that is most often taught in law schools. Its foundations date back to the 1970s, when law professors including Harvard Law School’s Derrick Bell began exploring how race and racism have shaped American law and society.

The theory rests on the premise that racial bias - intentional or not - is baked into U.S. laws and institutions. Black Americans, for example, are incarcerated at much higher rates than any other racial group, and the theory invites scrutiny of the criminal justice system's role in that.
-ESSAY: Explainer: What 'critical race theory' means and why it's igniting debate (Gabriella Borter, September 22, 2021, Reuters)

The incident brought renewed attention to the enduring use of restraint and seclusion in education. The practice — which can include putting children in closets, sending them into timeout boxes and locking them in tiny rooms — has been criticized for decades.

But it sometimes remains in use in districts across the United States to manage students’ behavior, and children with disabilities and students of color are disproportionately subjected to it.

The danger with our commitment to the principle of racial equality is that it leads us to confuse tactics with principles. The principle of gaining equal educational opportunity for black children was and is right. But our difficulties came when we viewed racial balance and busing as the only means of achieving that goal.[...]

[T]ime proved that the persistent educational gap between black and white students was only indirectly traceable to segregation. Instead, the root of the problem appeared to be the substantial disparities in the resources provided to black students relative to white students. Many, including myself, decided that given the difficulty of integrating black and Latino students with their swiftly fleeing white counterparts, we should concentrate on desegregating the money.
? Derrick Bell, Silent Covenants

Amen, brother.

Grade: B+

Review of Christmas at Thompson Hall (Anthony Trollope)

Sat, 20 Dec 2025 00:00:01 EST

The Browns spend their Winters in the South of France, but have been summoned to the tiutular family estate for a Christmas Eve meeting with her sister’s new fiance. Unfortunately, Mr. Brown is reluctant:

It was not without considerable trouble that she had induced Mr. Brown to come as far as Paris. Most unwillingly had he left Pau; and then, twice on his journey--both at Bordeaux and Tours--he had made an attempt to return. From the first moment he had pleaded his throat, and when at last he had consented to make the journey, he had stipulated for sleeping at those two towns and at Paris.

Mrs. Brown can not quite convince herself that Mr. isn’t just being a hypochondriac, but the good woman loves her husband and is most accommodating. So after dinner at their hotel in Paris:

Down in the salon he had seen a large jar of mustard standing on a sideboard. As he left the room he had observed that this had not been withdrawn with the other appurtenances of the meal. If she could manage to find her way down there, taking with her a handkerchief folded for the purpose, and if she could then appropriate a part of the contents of that jar, and returning with her prize, apply it to his throat, he thought that he could get some relief, so that he might be able to leave his bed the next morning at five. “But I am afraid it will be very disagreeable for you to go down all alone at this time of night,” he croaked out in a piteous whisper.

“Of course I’ll go,” she said. “I don’t mind going in the least. Nobody will bite me,” and she at once began to fold a clean handkerchief. “I won’t be two minutes, my darling, and if there is a grain of mustard in the house I’ll have it on your chest immediately.”

SPOILER: (this story is not overlong and there are several good recordings of it, so you can avoid having it spoiled from here on out with little effort.)

For some demented reason, she determines to filch the mustard rather than just ask for some and ends up speaking around in the dark, dodging the night porter and finally ends up applying the poultice:

Leaving the candle on the table, so that she might steady her right hand with the left, she hurried stealthily to the bedside. Even though he was behaving badly to her, she would not cause him discomfort by waking him roughly. She would do a wife’s duty to him as a British matron should. She would not only put the warm mixture on his neck, but would sit carefully by him for twenty minutes, so that she might relieve him from it when the proper period should have come for removing the counter-irritation from his throat. There would doubtless be some little difficulty in this--in collecting the mustard after it had served her purpose. Had she been at home, surrounded by her own comforts, the application would have been made with some delicate linen bag, through which the pungency of the spice would have penetrated with strength sufficient for the purpose. But the circumstance of the occasion had not admitted this. She had, she felt, done wonders in achieving so much success as this which she had obtained. If there should be anything disagreeable in the operation, he must submit to it. He had asked for mustard for his throat, and mustard he should have.

As these thoughts passed quickly through her mind, leaning over him in the dark, with her eye fixed on the mixture lest it should slip, she gently raised his flowing beard with her left hand, and with her other inverted rapidly, steadily but very softly fixed the handkerchief on his throat. From the bottom of his chin to the spot at which the collar-bones meeting together form the orifice of the chest, it covered the whole noble expanse. There was barely time for a glance, but never had she been more conscious of the grand proportions of that manly throat. A sweet feeling of pity came upon her, causing her to determine to relieve his sufferings in the shorter space of fifteen minutes. He had been lying on his back, with his lips apart, and as she held back his beard, that and her hand nearly covered the features of his face. But he made no violent effort to free himself from the encounter. He did not even move an arm or a leg. He simply emitted a snore louder than any that had come before. She was aware that it was not his wont to be so loud--that there was generally something more delicate and perhaps more querulous in his nocturnal voice, but then the present circumstances were exceptional. She dropped the beard very softly--and there on the pillow before her lay the face of a stranger. She had put the mustard plaster on the wrong man.

Not Priam wakened in the dead of night, not Dido when first she learned that Æneas had fled, not Othello when he learned that Desdmona had been chaste, not Medea when she became conscious of her slaughtered children, could have been more struck with horror than was this British matron as she stood for a moment gazing with awe on that stranger’s bed.

This must have read differently 150 years ago, but those of us raised on sitcoms know things are about to go from bad to worse as Mrs. Brown tries getting herself out of this mess. Indeed, if this story was not source material for Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity it is certainly the inspiration for every character from Lucy Riccardo to George Costanza to Larry David. On the one hand, as in the novel, it is like watching a car crash in slow motion, on the other, it’s hilarious./

Again, as the story unwinds after that, we moderns anticipate the big reveal for quite awhile, so the latter portion of the story seems quite slow. But, in its day, it may have surprised the Victorians. At any rate, it is a terrific lesser-known Christmas story.

Grade: A-

Review of Hollow (short story) (Breece Pancake)

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:00:01 EST

The excellent podcast, Why is This Good?, recently spoke about the short story, Hollow, by Breece D’J Pancake, a writer I was unfamiliar with. There are ample links below to biographical information about the author, but the main takeaway is that he was born and raised in West Virginia and, despite escaping briefly to the University of Virginia for graduate studies, never really left the hollows, neither in his writing nor in his too short life. Ultimately, he killed himself at 26, leaving behind a few widely praised short stories.

Hollow seems representative enough of his work and is certainly well-written and at least somewhat affecting, but it is also deeply depressing and not a little disturbing. The main character, Buddy, works in the same sort of mining job that killed his father, though the local mines are now considered tapped out. He and his friends/co-workers think they can still eke out riches from the seams. Meanwhile, Buddy’s girlfriend is about to leave him and his dog and his trailer behind and return to a life of prostitution that she thinks will provide for her better than he can.

One is reminded here of JD Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, which details the social pathologies that this region’s residents wallow in, rather than picking up and moving on to better lives. The tragedy is that even the author found himself unable to do so, physically or mentally, thus wasting a genuine talent.

Grade: B