This book was excellent, I couldn't put it down. Woodrell has a certain kind of writing that makes you come back for more.
The storyline is pretty simple, but the characters are enthralling. I highly recommend this book. ( )

A brutal story about hard times in the hill country of southern Missouri. It's a tough life growing up with pot farms and meth labs as the major (and only) "industry", but 17-year-old Ree is a Dolly "bred'n buttered" and is up to the task of saving her family. The disappearance of the father before his day in court puts the family home and land in jeopardy. Ree enters the no-man's land of distant and unhospitable kin to find her father so that they won't be "left like dogs in the fields" without their ramshackle house.

The poetic writing combined with the gritty language was an interesting contrast in this almost myth-like tale. Ree is one of the most memorable characters I've come across in a coming-of-age novel. She can take a beating, handle a gun, and skin a squirrel with ease, while having a tenderness beyond her years for her two younger brothers and her mentally ill mother. This gripping life-interrupter packs a lot of emotional intensity in its 193 pages, but it is definitely not for the faint of heart. ( )

I had a very difficult time with this book. It was difficult to read, both because it was written in the Ozark dialect, and also because it was, well, difficult to read. Everything that happens in the book is written so matter-of factly, like it's perfectly normal for a teenaged girl to be beaten by a group of adult women because she's asking too many questions. Even Ree, the teenager, seems to accept this as the way of the world. That being said, it is a very powerful book, more so because I suspect that these things happen daily in that area. I didn't like it, I didn't enjoy it, but I can't call it a "bad book." ( )

A coming of age story about a young girl searching for her missing father in order to save the family home from repossession. ( )

http://tinyurl.com/4qed7x

Although I guess this novel is technically a mystery, it feels less like one than most. It's gritty, harsh and honest-- you are in the Ozarks living this teenager's life, feeling her emotional and physical hurts. And because it's written by a man from that part of the country, you are more willing to believe that this torturous existence and the society that surrounds it are true-to-life.

I wonder how Woodrell would do on books not set in the Ozarks, because the book would be nothing without that. Of course, I'm perfectly fine with him keeping on in this vein. What's the oft-used phrase? "Write what you know."

If only I could figure out how the blue bag fit into the picture-- is this a plot hole on Woodrell's part, or am I just missing something? (I paged through twice after finishing.) ( )

This was an excellent read. Woodrell created a cold and gray Missouri that left me shivering. His depiction of the landscape and people was masterful. Ree Dolly was the perfect heroine struggling for survival in the Ozarks where today's moonshine is 'crank'.

I did love Woodrell's language, which was English, but he chose the correct words and put them in just the right order. ( )

Gorgeous, raw, riveting, redemptive....I love this book and am thrilled to have found DW.

Don't know where to begin - beauty in scene & setting that is wrenching...characters so true they must have been divined rather than created...a devastating heart-scraping revelation of right and wrong and its refusal to take any recognizable form in a remote and un-nurturing landscape.

That I know this place - but spent a long time trying to pretend I had only the most ephemeral relationship with it - has caused this book to lodge hard in me. Ozark people (like marginalized people in other American corners) are hard to defend and harder to love - easy to condemn.

One of the most beautiful books I've read. ( )

When Jessup goes missing after putting up the Dolly family house for his bail bond, his daughter Ree has to find him or be made homeless. What's more, her ma is crazy and she's having to bring up her younger brothers on her own.
This is life on the edge and making a living is hard. Just about everyone is related, but these mountain folks still don't trust each other, as Ree discovers when she goes looking for her pa on the other side of the valley.
In a mere 193 pages, you get a icy clear picture of this hard life in the brutal winter of the Ozark mountains. Although there's little cheer, Ree has a true pioneer spirit and you root for her from page one. I'll now have to track down all his previous books - highly recommended. ( )

Daniel Woodrell is one of the foremost writers working in what's been called "hillbilly noir" and Winter's Bone is an excellent example of the genre.

Jessup Dolly, the local gourmet crank chef, has gone missing, and his 16-year-old daughter, Ree, has to find him. It seems Jessup has put the Dolly house up as part of his bail bond, and his court date is fast approaching. If he doesn't show, the house is forfeited.

It's a big problem, because Ree's mother has had some kind of mental breakdown and is incapable of ... well, she's just generally incapable. Ree has to look after her, as well her (Ree's) two young brothers.

Ree's search takes her to some pretty ugly places, where she meets some pretty ugly people -- most them her relatives, as the setting is one of those out-of-the-way hollows where all 200 people living there are related to each other one way or another.

They're violent people who spend a lot of time drinking, drugging, and beating and killing people without much thought of the "outside" world.

Woodrell's written about these people before, and he continues to mix in asides about them belonging to an OT kind of religious cult that's older than Christ. I'm not sure if this stuff works for me: on the one hand, it provides a spooky kind of supernatural aura at times, but, on the other, there's little enough that it also seems tacked on an irrelevant at times.

This is Woodrell's eighth novel, and I think there are some places where his trying too hard to be literary and serious. Yet those places are few and far between compared to the rest of the taut writing.

I highly recommend this book. ( )

Ree Dolly is a tough, determined sixteen-year-old who is faced with responsibilities most adults could not face-up to, let alone a
young, teenage girl. The Dolly family lives in a grim, destitute Missouri town where front yards are decorated with slaughtered deer
and most town-folk are related in some way. When Ree learns that her father, a “crank cooker”, may have jumped bail and thereby
force the family to loose their home, she goes on a dangerous hunt to find her father and save her home. Ree is faced with
unfathomable obstacles as she has two young brothers to look after as well as a mother who is mentally incapable of the simplest of
chores. The most compelling element of this fascinating novel is the intensity of the author’s writing. Readers may find themselves
re-reading lines just to appreciate his meaningful blending of words. ( )

The quotes on the cover (Annie Proulx and Val McDermid) are for once right in their praise of this book. It is indeed a gem of a novel, exciting, scary and sad. I will try to keep Daniel Woodrells name next time I stand in front of the bookshelves. ( )

From Publisher’s Weekly: Ree, too young to escape the Ozarks by joining the army, cares for her two younger brothers and mentally ill mother after her methamphetamine-cooking father, Jessup, disappears. Recently arrested on drug charges, Jessup bonded out of jail by using the family home as collateral, but with a court date set in one week's time and Jessup nowhere to be found, Ree has to find him--dead or alive--or the house will be repossessed. At its best, the novel captures the near-religious criminal mania pervasive in rural communities steeped in drug culture. Woodrell's prose, lyrical as often as dialogic, creates an unwieldy but alluring narrative that allows him to draw moments of unexpected tenderness from predictable scripts: from Ree's fearsome, criminal uncle Teardrop, Ree discovers the unshakable strength of family loyalty; from her friend Gail and her woefully dependant siblings, Ree learns that a faith in kinship can blossom in the face of a bleak and flawed existence.

Recommended by: Karyn

Relentlessly depressing, this book examines the raw ugliness of poverty, depravity and violence. This is not a fun read by any means, but the language is lyrical and the book is overall a compelling read. Not long - thank goodness! - but it does stay with you. ( )

Startling novel of survival and struggle of young girl with dreadful circumstances to overcome. ( )