Joe Paperback - 2003

From the rear cover

"Brilliant . . . Larry Brown has slapped his own fresh tattoo on the big right arm of Southern Lit." --The Washington Post Book World

Joe Ransom is a hard-drinking ex-con pushing fifty who just won't slow down--not in his pickup, not with a gun, and certainly not with women. Gary Jones estimates his own age to be about fifteen. Born luckless, he is the son of a hopeless, homeless wandering family, and he's desperate for a way out. When their paths cross, Joe offers him a chance just as his own chances have dwindled to almost nothing. Together they follow a twisting map to redemption--or ruin.

"Literature of the first order . . . Powerful stuff spun by a sure, patient hand . . . His characters just are. They call to mind the Joads in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and the pictures and people in James Agee's and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. It is an understated, powerful, beautiful evocation of a place, a time, a people. It is a book that will last." --Detroit Free Press

"Luminescent prose tempered by wit." --The New York Times Book Review

"Sinewy and lyrical." --Los Angeles Times

"Brown compels our admiration, Joe himself makes us care." --Newsweek