Tender As Hellfire

From The Award-winning Author Of The Boy Detective Fails: A Novel Of Two Brothers Growing Up On The Other Side Of The Tracks. “a Trailer Park In The Plains Town Of Tenderloin Is The Setting Of This Crusty Coming-of-age Debut, Which Features Some Of The Liveliest Characters Just This Side Of Believable That One Is Apt To Meet In A Contemporary Novel. The First-person Narrator Is A Moral But Susceptible Eleven-year-old Called Dough, Who Lusts After His Fifth-grade Teacher And Idolizes His Trouble-making Older Brother, Pill-bug. The Boys, Who Are New To The Town And Shamed By The Stigma Of Living In A Trailer, Were Named By A Father Who Wanted Them To Remain Tough And Who Ended Up Dying While Smuggling Cigarettes Along A Texas Highway. Their Mother And Her New Boyfriend, French, Are Low-life Swingers, Allowing The Siblings To Spend Nights With Val, Who Entertains A Slew Of Men But Whom Dough Worships As A Virginal Madonna. Dough’s Own Adoring Friend Is Lottie, A Slightly Deranged Girl Who Offers Dough A Gift Of One Of Her Taxidermist Father’s Specimens; Meanwhile, Pill-bug Earns A Special Affection From Lunna, A High School Floozy. Each Character Is Vividly Described . . . Meno’s Passionate New Voice Makes Him A Writer To Watch.” —publishers Weekly In Tender as Hellfire, first-time novelist Joe Meno limns a near-fantastical world of trailer park floozies, broken-down '76 Impalas, lost glass eyes, and the daily experiences of two boys trying to make sense of their random, sharp lives. Dough and Pill are brothers bound by more than blood. The anguish of their past, the terror of their present, and the uncertainty of their future all underscore the only truth that is within their grasp: each other. For beneath the cruel surface of their trailer park community lies a menagerie of odd characters, each one strange yet somehow beautiful, including Val, the blowsy bottle-blonde who shows surprising maternal instincts when the boys need it most, and El Rey del Perdito, the "Undisputed King of the Tango," a widower who dances nightly, imagining his wife in his arms, as Dough peers through the window contemplating a love that seems not to die. Surrounded by the strange and displaced, Dough and Pill must navigate through a world of constant pain and confusion. Finding beauty in unexpected places and maintaining reverence for hard-won scars, these two brothers learn, finally, that even broken things can be perfect. Long before he established himself as an indie-publishing sensation with his hit novels Hairstyles of the Damned and The Boy Detective Fails, Joe Meno brought out his debut novel, Tender As Hellfire, with St. Martin's Press. Here, with a re-edited paperback edition, Meno limns a near-fantastical world of trailer park floozies, broken-down '76 Impalas, lost glass eyes, and the daily experiences of two boys trying to make sense of their random, sharp lives. Dough and Pill are brothers bound by more than blood. The anguish of their past, the terror of their present, and the uncertainty of their future all underscore the only truth that is within their grasp: each other. For beneath the cruel surface of their trailer park community lies a menagerie of odd characters, each one strange yet somehow beautiful. Surrounded by the strange and displaced, Dough and Pill must navigate through a world of constant pain and confusion. Finding beauty in unexpected places and maintaining a reverence for hard-won scars, these two brothers learn, finally, that even broken things can be perfect Paperback reissue of indie sensation Joe Meno's debut novel. Dough and Pill are brothers bound by more than blood. The anguish of their past, the terror of their present, and the uncertainty of their future all underscore the only truth that is within their grasp: each other. For beneath the cruel surface of their trailer park community lies a menagerie of odd characters, each one strange yet somehow beautiful, including Val, the blowsy bottle-blonde who shows surprising maternal instincts when the boys need it most, and El Rey del Perdito, the Undisputed King of the Tango, a widower who dances nightly, imagining his wife in his arms, as Dough peers through the window contemplating a love that seems not to die. Surrounded by the strange and displaced, Dough and Pill must navigate through a world of constant pain and confusion. Finding beauty in unexpected places and maintaining reverence for hard-won scars, these two brothers learn, finally, that even broken things can be perfect. First-time novelist Joe Meno limns a near-fantastical world of strange happenings and odd, yet beautiful, characters in a trailer park community where two brothers, bound by more than blood, reside