Blacktop Wasteland by S.A. Cosby

 

Another starkly beautiful novel about crime and pain in rural Virginia; there's vengeance at the end, but the novel is more about family and the difference between who we tell ourselves we are and who we are--the latter writ large because with gangsters the difference is such a chasm. Violent and brutal, and very worth reading, with an ending that seems more open-ended to me than the author maybe intended.