New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1994. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. [12], 354, [2] pages. Signed by the author on the half title page. Full of the intensity and vibrance of Appalachian speech, a tale set in rural West Virginia vividly captures the violence of a backwoodsman and drug lord named Tannhauser and the innocence of a young man named Goody. Pinckney Benedict (born 1964) is an American short-story writer and novelist whose work often reflects his Appalachian background. Benedict graduated from Princeton University, where he studied primarily with Joyce Carol Oates, in 1986, and from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa in 1988. He has published three collections of short fiction (Town Smokes, The Wrecking Yard, and Miracle Boy) and a novel (Dogs of God). His stories have appeared in publications including Esquire, Zoetrope: All-Story, StoryQuarterly, Ontario Review, Appalachian Heritage, the O. Henry Award series, the New Stories from the South series and the Pushcart Prize series. Along with his wife, the novelist Laura Benedict, he edits the biennial Surreal South fiction anthology series. The third volume of the series, Surreal South '11, was published in October 2011. He wrote the screenplay for the feature film Four Days, which starred Kevin Zegers, Colm Meaney, Lolita Davidovich, and William Forsythe. He serves on the faculty of the low-residency MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina. He served on the writing faculties of Oberlin College, Princeton University, and as a Thurber House Fellow at the Ohio State University. He is a full professor in the English Department at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. More