Bastard out of Carolina / Dorothy Allison.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Greenville County, South Carolina, a wild, lush place, is home to the Boatwright family-rough-hewn men who drink hard and shoot up each other's trucks, and indomitable women who marry young and age all too quickly. At the heart of this astonishing novel is Ruth Anne Boatwright, known simply as Bone, a South Carolina bastard with an annotated birth certificate to tell the tale. Observing everything with the mercilessly keen eye of a child, Bone finds herself caught in a family triangle that will test the loyalty of her mother, Anney. Her stepfather, Daddy Glen, calls Bone "cold as death, mean as a snake, and twice as twisty," yet Anney needs Glen. At first gentle with Bone, Daddy Glen becomes steadily colder and more furious-until their final, harrowing encounter, from which there can be no turning back.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Set in the rural South, this tale centers around the Boatwright family, a proud and closeknit clan known for their drinking, fighting, and womanizing. Nicknamed Bone by her Uncle Earle, Ruth Anne is the bastard child of Anney Boatwright, who has fought tirelessly to legitimize her child. When she marries Glen, a man from a good family, it appears that her prayers have been answered. However, Anney suffers a miscarriage and Glen begins drifting. He develops a contentious relationship with Bone and then begins taking sexual liberties with her. Embarrassed and unwilling to report these unwanted advances, Bone bottles them up and acts out her confusion and shame. Unaware of her husband's abusive behavior, Anney stands by her man. Eventually, a violent encounter wrests Bone away from her stepfather. In this first novel, Allison creates a rich sense of family and portrays the psychology of a sexually abused child with sensitivity and insight. Recommended for general fiction collections.--Kimberly G. Allen, National Assn. of Home Builders Lib., Washington, D.C. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Allison's remarkable country voice emerges in a first novel spiked with pungent characters ranging from the slatternly to the grotesque, and saturated with sense of place--Greenville, S.C. Ruth Anne Boatwright, 13, got the nickname Bone at birth, when she was tiny as a knucklebone, and the tag acquires painful derivatives, like ``Bonehead.'' While her mother, Annie, a waitress, tries vainly to get the word ``illegitimate'' scrubbed from Bone's birth certificate, her tobacco-spitting granny reminds her she's a bastard. The identity of her real father, whom granny drove away, is kept from her. Surrounded by loving aunts and uncles, Bone still endures ridicule (she's homely, she has no voice for gospel singing) and--from vicious Daddy Glen, her mother's new husband--beatings and sexual abuse. Bone takes refuge in petty crime, like breaking into Woolworth's, and finds her truest friend in unmarried Aunt Raylene, who once had a great love for another woman. Annie gently defends Daddy Glen, blaming her daughter, until the tale's inevitably brutal climax. Mental and physical cruelty to women forms a main theme, illuminated by the subplot of pathetic albino Shannon Pearls, her story rife with Southern gothic overtones. Allison, author of the well-received short story collection Trash , doesn't condescend to her ``white trash'' characters; she portrays them with understanding and love. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Booklist Review

Ruth Anne Boatwright starts life with the stigma of having glaring red letters declaring her "ILLEGITIMATE" on her birth certificate, but her mother, Anney, takes good care of her daughter, raising her right and as best she can in dusty Greenville County, South Carolina. Twelve years go by, and Anney has managed to put together a family, including another daughter and a husband. But all she has labored so hard to achieve blows sky-high one summer afternoon, and most of the emotional shrapnel embeds itself in Ruth Anne's young heart. An excep~tional first novel, this stunning, fluid, sad, and courageous story would be outstanding even if it were the author's tenth. --Cynthia Ogorek

Kirkus Book Review

A girl comes of age in '50's South Carolina fighting the label ``trash'' and the violent advances of her stepfather: an overly familiar story as Allison (Trash, 1988) handles the material in a surprisingly nostalgic way. When narrator Ruth Ann Boatwright (nicknamed Bone) is born to 15-year-old unmarried Anney, the word ``ILLEGITIMATE'' is stamped in big red letters on the birth certificate; for years, Anney will stubbornly try to get a new document without the glaring stigma. She will also try to make a decent home for her two daughters, marrying Glen Waddell, who--the black sheep of a prominent local family--admires the heavy-drinking, brawling Boatwright men. Glen adores Anney but the Boatwrights have their reservations: ``the boy could turn like whiskey in a bad barrel.'' Indeed, not only does he have trouble holding a job but soon makes Bone a scapegoat for his frustrations: she suffers beatings and sexual molestation, keeping silent in order not to spoil her mother's hard-won happiness. Though the family triangle is the dramatic center of the novel, the narrative meanders through the story of the Boatwright clan. Bone reflects on her strong and independent (if hard-treated) aunts and appreciates family strength, love, and loyalty while recognizing that the outside world sees the Boatwrights as antisocial trash. Compassionate if not very compelling; after the often searing power of Allison's short stories, she seems not to have claimed her voice so much as tamed it.