A beautifully written, darkly humorous account of a young Kentuckian's cross-country search for self--and his rocky transition to fatherhood. "As moving as the current he must cross and recross to find his way."--New York Times Book Review. Offutt is the author of Kentucky Straight.

The Same River Twice: A Memoir

Biographies & Memoirs

Offutt, Chris

Memoirs

Penguin??Books

Virgil Caudill has always toed the line of the law, leaving the hell-raising to his brother, Boyd. Now Boyd is dead, and everyone expects Virgil to avenge the death. Virgil cannot do this and heads west, where he finds community and love, until the past overtakes him with devastating results.

Good Brother

TRAFALGAR SQUARE +

A consistently reflective, often riotous narrative of the author's progress into manhood, from trouble and conflict in his native Appalachia, through a tour of America's underbelly, to his marriage and settlement on the Iowa River. Tour.

Arts & Literature

Simon&Schuster

Kentucky straight is bourbon with no mixer. Kentucky Straight is Kentucky seen without nostalgic gloss. These riveting, often heartbreaking stories, take us through country that is unmapped. They are set in a nameless Appalachian community too small to be called a town, a place where wanting an education is a mark of ungodly arrogance and dowsing for water a legitimate occupation; where hunting is not a sport but a means of survival. These are stories of coal miners and backwoods medicine men, of gamblers and marijuana farmers, tales of real tragedy and unutterable strangeness that convey their sense of place so vividly that we feel its ground rise beneath our feet. Offutt has received a James Michener Grant and a Kentucky Arts Council Award.

Kentucky Straight: Stories

Literature & Fiction

United States

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group

Virgil, the good brother, must avenge the death of his hell-raising brother Boyd to fulfill the unwritten code of his Kentucky community, but he decides to escape to Montana, where he finds peace until his past catches up to him

The Good Brother

A collection of tales features the devastating experiences of characters from Kentucky

Out Of The Woods

Virgil Caudill has never gone looking for trouble, but this time he's got no choice -- his hell-raising brother Boyd has been murdered. Everyone knows who did it, and in the hills of Kentucky, tradition won't let a murder go unavenged. No matter which way he chooses, Virgil will lose. The Good Brother, Chris Offutt's finely crafted first novel, is the story of Virgil's struggle to find his real self in the wake of an impossible choice. Traversing the American landscape from the hollows of Eastern Kentucky to the plains of Montana, Offutt explores the hunger for belonging that drives our most passionate beliefs, and in the process shows himself to be one of our most powerful storytellers.

Seven years ago, Chris Offutt made his literary debut with Kentucky Straight, a fiercely original collection that earned him not only critical praise but many prestigious awards. The eight new stories in Out of the Woods mark Offutt'

Out of the Woods: Stories

The author of The Same River Twice recalls his painful but ultimately revealing attempt to return home to the rural hills of Kentucky to give back to his hometown community and to record the personal story of his parents-in-law, Holocaust survivors who had emigrated from Poland in 1946. 40,000 first printing.

No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home

At the age of nineteen, Chris Offutt had already been rejected by the army, the Peace Corps, the park rangers, and the police. So he left his home in the Kentucky Appalachians and thumbed his way north -- into a series of odd jobs and even stranger encounters with his fellow Americans. Fifteen years later, Offutt finds himself in a place he never thought he'd be: settled down with a pregnant wife. Writing from the banks of the Iowa River, where he came to rest, he intersperses the story of his youthful journeys with that of his journey to fatherhood in a memoir that is uniquely candid, occasionally brutal, and often wonderfully funny. As he reckons with the comforts and terrors of maturity, Offutt also discovers what is best in life and in himself.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Offutt, Chris. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Offutt, Chris

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Offutt, Chris. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Same River Twice: A Memoir

Good Brother

The Same River Twice: A Memoir

Kentucky Straight: Stories

The Good Brother

Out Of The Woods

The Good Brother

Out of the Woods: Stories

No Heroes: A Memoir of Coming Home

The Same River Twice: A Memoir