Weedeater : An Illustrated Novel

Finalist, 2019 Weatherford Award (Fiction) A finalist for the 2019 Weatherford Award in Fiction, Weedeater picks up six years after the end of Robert Gipe's acclaimed first novel, Trampoline , and continues the story of the people of Canard County, Kentucky. In Weedeater , the reader finds Canard County living through the last hurrah of the coal industry and the most turbulent and deadly phase of the community's battle with opioid abuse. This is a contemporary story of love and loss told by a pair of eastern Kentucky mountaineers: Gene, the lovelorn landscaper who bears witness to the misadventures of a family entangled in drugs, artmaking, and politics, beset by both environmental and self-destruction; and Dawn Jewell, a young mother who is searching--for lost family members, lost youth, lost community, and lost heart. The events it chronicles are frantic, but its voice is by turns taciturn and angry, filled with humor and stoic grace. At its heart, Weedeater is a story about how we put our lives back together when we lose the things we thought we couldn't bear losing, how we find new purpose in what we thought were scraps and trash caught in the weeds.