David Bottoms

#2

1990

Set in Macon, Georgia, this novel-length character study covers three days in the life of "nice guy" Connie Holtzclaw, small-time prizefighter and would-be dreamer turned kidnapper. Connie and his older brother Carl, the mastermind behind the scheme, kidnap and hold a rich college kid for $200,000 ransom. With his hoped-for cut of the money, Connie intends to lure Rita, his waitress-girlfriend, to Montana to start a new life together. As dark events unfold, Connie's naivete is juxtaposed against a reality of double murder and betrayal.

#3

Rooted in the customs of Southern families and peopled with undertakers, bluegrass musicians, daughters practicing karate, and elderly parents, David Bottoms' poems are generous, insightful, and lean headlong into familial wisdom. Past and present interweave with grandmothers spitting tobacco juice, ponds "filled with construction runoff," and the boyhood home-site paved over for a KFC. This is Bottoms' most personal and heartbreaking book.