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Lucy Perley is nine-years-old and as far as she can tell her world is solid as packed dirt. She spends her summers jumping on the trampoline, visiting her Mamaw, and wading in the creek. Her mother and father aren’t perfect, but she loves them with all of her heart. Her family’s strange friends often visit, but one familiar face brings her candy and cream soda. The only problem is he’s also fueling her parents’ painkiller addiction.
The Eastern Kentucky community of Turkeyfoot is ravaged by the opioid epidemic and Sweetie Goodins has played no small part in feeding his neighbors’ bad habits. Having spent his life peddling painkillers, Sweetie struggles between accepting responsibility for his actions versus blaming the will of the addicts around him.
As his pill-pushing partner begins selling fentanyl for more profit, Sweetie’s attempts to justify his business dealings crumble. Sweetie witnesses the unraveling life of Lucy as her parents fall deeper into the pit of addiction. The Perleys, like so many others on Turkeyfoot Mountain, become willing to do whatever it takes to get their daily fix. Their bad company leaves Lucy vulnerable to a type of evil she has yet to encounter.
Before Sweetie can atone for any of his wrongdoings, he must either acknowledge his role in the lives ruined or continue paving a path of destruction.
“This harrowing debut is equal parts grit and empathy. Turkeyfoot is full of complex characters, pitch-perfect dialogue, and a sense of place so vibrant you can hear the birds singing, see the mist-shrouded hills, and smell the smoke of the off-brand cigarettes. Rick Childers is a writer who cares as deeply about language as he does about action, whose love for Appalachia shows clearly in his insistence on showing its joys, sorrows, and complications.”
—Silas House, New York Times Bestselling novelist and Kentucky Poet Laureate
“A story of place richly imagined, Turkeyfoot ties together a cast of characters fully fleshed and deeply scarred. Where Childers shines is in his understanding of the intimacy demanded by such places. Here, no one is ever more than one person removed. All are linked like bloodkin.”
—David Joy, author of Those We Thought We Knew, winner of the Willie Morris Award and the Thomas Wolfe Literary Award
“Rick Childers brings to Turkeyfoot an ear for language, an eye for detail, and a feel for the structure of story that will keep the human face of the opioid epidemic before us.”
—Michael Henson, author of Maggie Boylan
Rick Childers is a fiction writer whose work has appeared in Limestone Journal, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel, Still: the Journal, Heartwood Literary Magazine, and the San Joaquin Review. Rick is from Eastern Kentucky where he lives with his wife Sydni and their two children. He also enjoys watching wrestling, reading paperbacks, and hunting ginseng. His novel TURKEYFOOT is forthcoming from Shotgun Honey in 2024.
