Dark, profane, and hilarious, yet ultimately humane, these
ten stories are the latest and best of Robin McLean’s reports from the
eternal battlefront that is the United States. Ranging across the continent,
from Alaska to Missouri, from the flatlands to the mountains, each tale is a
snapshot of the political, racial, and sexual undercurrents roiling
contemporary life, and each finds a way into the nerves and blood that pulse
beneath the question of how to live a decent life.
Here you'll find stolen children living life to the fullest on
the run and on the road, soldiers guarding empty frontiers, and rugged
individualists brought low by an uncaring nature. You'll find prehistoric
beasts rubbing talons with hustlers as well as death machines lurking beneath
the bucolic countryside. Here you'll find hatred, friendship, and pitch-black
humour all seething in the same stew.
Get ’em Young, Treat ’em Tough, Tell
’em Nothing marries the sardonic moral and political explorations of a
Flannery O’Connor to the surreal, scuzzy wit of a Denis Johnson. It is a
brazen State of the Union for a nation on the edge.