How I Left the Great State of Tennessee and Went on to Better Things A Novel

In the waning days of one of the most unrecognized American exoduses of the twentieth-century, millions of broken people have left the strip mines of Appalachia in search of better things. In 1961, two of these yearning souls—Dahlia Jean Coker, the teenage daughter of a sluttish mother and a deadbeat Daddy, and "Twitch," an ex-con descended from the legendary outlaw Younger clan—are looking for their own ways out. After a botched robbery by Twitch, Dahlia takes the lead—with Twitch's loot and his teenage son—while the old man gives chase, with revenge in his heart and Dahlia's mother by his side. Through the South, and finally on to a Key West reeling from the Bay of Pigs debacle, the chase is at once thrilling, heartbreaking, murderous, dark, and hilarious. Along the way, readers encounter a snake-handling evangelist, determined civil rights activists, equally determined Klansmen, and the unfortunate wife of an adulterous NASA scientist. Battling a Tennessee flood of biblical proportions and a looming Florida hurricane, Dahlia, Twitch, and their improbable traveling companions all land up at Dahlia's daddy's houseboat. The final showdown, with a fortune and dreams of a better life at stake, will have readers marveling.