Redneck Riviera

Armadillos, Outlaws, and the Demise of an American Dream

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Book Description

From the author of National Book Award finalist Salvation on Sand Mountain, a bracingly original American adventure story (Publishers Weekly) about a quest for a (very) small piece of the American Dream After his father’s death, Dennis Covington plunges into a Florida shootout to claim his only inheritance, two and a half worthless acres of land that his father bought in a real estate scam-but the more determined he becomes to share his father’s dream with his own children, the more it seems that his true legacy is bad judgment in real estate. In a tale filled with characters drawn from a Florida like Flannery O’Connor’s Georgia, Covington finds his life threatened, his truck torched, and his small cabin shot up and vandalized, but he clings to his inheritance with heartbreaking tenacity. Redneck Riviera is at once a comic and tender celebration of family, a brilliant look at the clash of values tearing much of rural America apart, and a bittersweet comment on our age-old passion to possess and transform the land.