Nearly Nowhere

Summer Brenner

Description

Fifteen years ago, Kate Ryan and her daughter Ruby moved to the secluded village of Zamora in northern New Mexico to find a quiet life off the grid. But when Kate invites the wrong drifter home for the night, the delicate peace of their domain is shattered.

Troy Mason manages to hang onto Kate for a few weeks, though his charm increasingly fails to offset his lies and delusions of grandeur. It is only a matter of time before the lies turn abusive, igniting a chain reaction of violence and murder. Not even a bullet in the leg will keep Troy from seeking revenge as he chases the missing Ruby over back roads through the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, down the River of No Return, and to a white supremacy enclave in Idaho’s Bitterroot Wilderness. Nearly Nowhere explores the darkest places of the American West, emerging with only a fragile hope of redemption in the maternal ties that bind.

Originally published by Gallimard’s la Serie noire as Presque nulle part.

Sujets

• Adventure
• Crime
• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 05 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781604867732
• Langue: English

Extrait

switch·blade (sw ch’bl d’] n.
a different slice of hardboiled fiction where the dreamers and the schemers, the dispossessed and the damned, and the hobos and the rebels tango at the edge of society.
THE JOOK
GARY PHILLIPS
I-5: A NOVEL OF CRIME, TRANSPORT, AND SEX
SUMMER BRENNER
PIKE
BENJAMIN WHITMER
THE CHIEU HOI SALOON
MICHAEL HARRIS
THE WRONG THING
BARRY GRAHAM
SEND MY LOVE AND A MOLOTOV COCKTAIL! STORIES OF CRIME, LOVE AND REBELLION
EDITED BY GARY PHILLIPS AND ANDREA GIBBONS
PRUDENCE COULDN’T SWIM
JAMES KILGORE
NEARLY NOWHERE
SUMMER BRENNER
OTHER WORKS by Summer Brenner
FICTION
I-5, A Novel of Crime, Transport, and Sex
My Life in Clothes
The Missing Lover
One Minute Movies
Dancers and the Dance
The Soft Room
POETRY
From the Heart to the Center
Everyone Came Dressed as Water
NOVELS FOR YOUTH
Ivy, Homeless in San Francisco
Richmond Tales, Lost Secrets of the Iron Triangle
AUDIO
Arundo Salon, Because the Spirit Moved
ABOUT NEARLY NOWHERE
"With her beautifully wrought sentences and dialogue that bring characters alive, Summer Brenner weaves a gripping and dark tale of mysterious crime based in spiritually and naturally rich northern New Mexico and beyond."
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, historian and writer, author of Roots of Resistance: A History of Land Tenure in New Mexico
"Summer Brenner’s Nearly Nowhere has the breathless momentum of the white-water river her characters must navigate en route from a isolated village in New Mexico to a neo-Nazi camp in Idaho. A flawed but loving single mother, a troubled teen girl, a good doctor with a secret, a murderous sociopath this short novel packs enough into its pages to fight well above its weight class."
Michael Harris, author of The Chieu Hoi Saloon
"To the party, Summer Brenner brings a poet’s ear, a woman’s awareness, and a soulful intent, and her attention has enriched every manner of literary endeavor graced by it."
Jim Nisbet, author of A Moment of Doubt and Snitch World
"It’s because the characters are so richly drawn, the writing so elegant, the rural western landscape so exquisitely described, that you don’t realize at first what Brenner has done to you; how she’s loaded up the dory, strapped you in, and loosed you down this terrifying river. And, then, of course, it’s too late. Nearly Nowhere is a beautiful and chilling novel."
Benjamin Whitmer, author of Pike
ABOUT I-5, A NOVEL OF CRIME, TRANSPORT, AND SEX
TOP TEN BOOKS OF 2009, Los Angeles Mystery Bookstore
TOP 50 BOOKS OF THE DECADE, BSC Review
"It has a quality very rare in literature: a subtle, dark humor that’s only perceivable when one goes deep into the heart of this world’s absurd tragedy, or tragic absurdity."
R. Crumb
"This book bleeds truth after you finish it, the blood will be on your hands."
Barry Gifford, author of Wild at Heart
"Well-written, without a superfluous word, it’s a big chase, practically a movie on the page."
Ned Sublette, author of Cuba and Its Music, The World That Made New Orleans, and The Year Before the Flood: A Story of New Orleans
"Anya is a wonderful, believable heroine, her tragic tale told from the inside out, without a shred of sentimental pity, which makes it all the stronger."
Denise Hamilton, author of The Last Embrace and editor of Los Angeles Noir
"I’m in awe. I-5 moves so fast you can barely catch your breath. It’s as tough as tires, as real and nasty as road rage, and best of all, it careens at breakneck speed over as many twists and turns as you’ll find on The Grapevine…. [A] hardboiled standout."
Julie Smith, author of Skip Langdon and Talba Wallis crime novel series and editor of New Orleans Noir
"[A] grim and gripping noir novel…. Brenner writes boldly and with seething clarity."
Nina Sankovitch, author of Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading
"[A] hairy and perfect novel….It does not hurt that Anya is the heroine to end all heroines. Brenner’s book is an antidote for a wide range of complaints."
magicmolly.tumblr.com
"[A] very smart and conscientious book. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t also an immensely enjoyable book. Brenner is an elegant writer, with an ear for the kind of startling turn of phrase that catches the reader off-guard and reawakens them to the force of her story."
Benjamin Whitmer, author of Pike
"A novel that will beat you up chances are you deserve it. I-5 cuts through layers of flesh to reveal the true heart of noir: that for every American dream there are a thousand nightmares. I have read no better novel in the genre. Roll over Willeford, tell Goodis the news."
Owen Hill, author of The Incredible Double and The Chandler Apartments
"We learn Anya’s story in layers, and we learn her character in actions that are never quite what we expect them to be. She kept me guessing all the way through this hallucinatory shadow-world tour."
Jedidiah Ayre, Ransom Notes: The BN Mystery Blog
"Steeped in tension and biting black humor, this noir road-novel-cum-character-study is an impressive debut by a promising new voice."
Garrett Kenyon, Literary Kicks blog
"Brenner did not set out to update Ivan Denisovich [by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn], but the similarities are unmistakable. In both novels, the main characters are snatched from their families and delivered to remote places that function by a harsh new set of rules….[B]oth characters also exhibit a sense of agency that helps them retain their humanity in brutish surroundings….Amidst all the difficult questions, the lively depiction of villains and antiheroes in I-5 make Brenner’s novel a thrill to read."
Matthew Hirsch, ZNet
"Having now read and completely enjoyed I-5 I still think Summer Brenner is a poet, but one with notable narrative skills and a deep commitment both to her characters and to justice…. I-5 is in this sense a political novel, though Brenner never lets this obstruct our view of her character. Anya is someone you will never forget."
Ron Silliman, ronsilliman.blogspot.com
"Wholly original piece of dark fiction that never goes where you expect it to and ventures into uncharted waters. It’s uncompromising in ways that should be exceptionally appealing to readers of dark fiction, I-5 is as tough a crime tale as you’re likely to find anywhere."
BSC Review
"Summer Brenner provides an insider’s look at the seedy world of sexual slavery…. Nothing gets sugar-coated, yet Brenner shows sincere sympathy and warmth for her characters. I found it hard to stop turning the pages."
David Batstone, author of Not for Sale, cofounder of Not for Sale campaign
"[A] journey marred with sex and crimes that exposes the harsh reality of the invisibility of women, immigrants, and the marginalized, struggling to survive."
Opal Palmer Adisa, author of Until Judgment Comes, Eros Muse, Caribbean Passion, and It Begins with Tears
"Inspired by the events of 1999 in Berkeley when a 17-year-old Indian girl died of carbon monoxide poisoning….Brenner took the incident many steps further, a tribute to her social conscience, especially her identification with immigrants and other marginalized groups, her feminism, and her considerable writing skills."
Estelle Jelinek, The Berkeley Daily Planet
"Her prose style is a mirror reflection of the interstate: parched, fast, and tense, with an emotional timbre that matches the velocity of the plot."
Rachel Swan, East Bay Express

Nearly Nowhere
By Summer Brenner
www.summerbrenner.com
Copyright © 2012 Summer Brenner
This edition copyright © 2012 PM Press
A version of Nearly Nowhere was previously published in France as Presque nulle part by Gallimard’s La Série noire, translation by Janine Herisson.
Quotes from The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version, 1946.
A word of appreciation to Hannah Boal, Deb Dohm, Meredith LaVene, and Shael Love for their advice and expertise
Published by:
PM Press
PO Box23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Cover illustration by Brian Bowes
www.brianbowesart.com
Interior design by Courtney Utt/briandesign
ISBN: 978-1-60486-306-2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011939682
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the USA on recycled paper by the Employee Owners of Thomson-Shore in Dexter, Michigan.
www.thomsonshore.com
for Michael who took us there …
Presentiment is that long Shadow on the Lawn Indicative that Suns go down
The Notice to the startled Grass That Darkness is about to pass
Emily Dickinson
PART I
1
F rom a hundred yards down the Zamora road in the back of a rusted wheelless and faded turquoise pick-up on the only way in and out of the village, Ruby Ryan lay shivering under a cotton blanket. Going to the fields, the Spanish farmers passed the human form in the truck. It was Ruby, Kate Ryan’s teenage daughter. That, they knew. Accustomed as they were to the shape and stupor of alcohol and drugs in their own families, they paid little attention. They climbed the paths behind the gas station to the precipitous arid plots of land where they surveyed their rows of green chile and squash, the trickling water in the irrigation ditches. They crossed themselves.
"With water life is not bad," they con