Bastard Out of Carolina

I can not say enough good things about this intense novel. This book should be required reading in colleges and universities, and I would say High Schools. Awareness can give those who suffer hope, give understanding of true suffering and strength to outsiders, and perhaps shame those would hurt the defenseless. I bought this book because the author's other books `Skin' and `Trash' are spotlighted in the anthologies `Courting Pleasure' and `Lovers: love and sex stories' by Tee A. Corinne. I enjoyed them both tremendously and sought out this book. From the back of the book - Greenville County, South Carolina, a wild, lush place, is home to the Boatwright family--rough-hewn men who drink hard and shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who marry young and age all too quickly. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a South Carolina bastard with an annotated birth certificate to tell the tale. Observing everything with the mercilessly keen eye of a child, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that will test the loyalty of her mother, Anney. Her stepfather, Daddy Glen, calls Bone "cold as death, mean as a snake, and twice as twisty," yet Anney needs Glen. At first gentle with Bone, Daddy Glen becomes steadily colder and more furious--until their final, harrowing encounter, from which there can be no turning back.