"Personal and profound, an epic remembrance of his parents' honky-tonk romance, delivered with the same hallmarks of Crowell's best songwriting: expert pacing, gritty detail, and humor by the bottle." --Austin Powell, "The Austin Chronicle"
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"Thoroughly readable, unblinkingly frank, laugh-out-loud funny and as profane as any Ship Channel longshoreman, it's a literary triumph that will rank along with Mary Karr's "The Liar's Club" as one of the finest pieces of Gulf Coast nonfiction." --William Michael Smith, "Houston Press"
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"[Crowell's] childhood memories of Jacinto City outside of Houston vary from uproarious to heartwarming, all told with a sharp wit and a Lone Star flair [and] brought to life in a manner that's simple, eloquent, and endlessly entertaining." --Jim Caligiuri, "The Austin Chronicle"
"A loving, affectionate tribute...Crowell's parents remain his heroes not in spite of their flaws, but because of them, and because of their son's proud refusal to sugarcoat the truth. Instead, this honest, forgiving, and self-assured memoir brings all the skeletons out of the closet and invites them to dance." --Gina Webb, "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution "
"Mysterious and wonderful...a rare and unaccountable instance of transcendence." --Barbara Fisher, "The Boston Globe"
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"A great read." --Billy Heller, " New York Post "
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"Humid, heavily atmospheric and often raucous...both horrific and hilarious [with] some of the most tender passages I have ever read." --Chet Flippo, "CMT"
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"Rodney Crowell's memoir of his boyhood in southeast Texas is a wonder: wistful and profane, heartbreaking and hilarious, loving and angry, proud and self-lacerating. Best known as a composer and performer of country and folk music, he emerges here as a prose stylist of energy and distinctiveness, a gifted storyteller who has, as it happens, an uncommonly interesting and deeply American story to tell....It's a measure of the subtle