Lee Clay Johnson will be here tonight signing Nitro Mountain!
If you’re a fan of Ron Rash, Daniel Woodrell, or William Gay, this is a debut novel that was made just for you. This book is gritty, so much so that you can almost feel the grease and dirt from these character’s lives coming off the pages.
The setting is a mine-polluted corner of Virginia. We meet Leon, a broken-armed, lovesick bass player who moves from couch to couch trying to pull himself together. We meet Jennifer, Leon’s on-again, off-again girlfriend who is falling into a rough crowd with Arnett, a drug addict and dealer with a whole list of issues. All of these characters are constantly trying to hold on to any hope they can find within their broken down lives. Johnson takes these characters and gives them the humanity they deserve. Even though they make bad choices, you can’t help but hope that they’re going to pick themselves back up and keep going. This is a close up look into the underbelly of contemporary Appalachia, and Johnson does a great job pulling the reader into this raw, dark world.
Don’t just take my word for it. Check out the praise that Nitro Mountain has been getting from the literary world, including a blurb from our very own Kelly :)!
“Daring . . . a worthy addition to the growing canon of contemporary Appalachian noir. . . . Johnson shows an incredible control of language. The narration is simple, but it enhances the world in which he plants us. . . . Nitro Mountain is like the home we failed to escape.” —Bradley Sides, Electric Lit
“Exquisitely stark and gritty . . . Raw, yet relentlessly compelling.” — Publishers Weekly
“Lee Clay Johnson has written a powerful, haunting debut novel. This book is dark and twisted, just the kind of book we southerners like…but it also has many moments of humor and heart, even if they are sometimes borne out of absurdity. ” — Kelly Pickerill, Lemuria Books
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