Lee Clay Johnson – författare

An astonishing, even shocking debut written with both humor and heart by, as John Casey puts it, “a natural-born writer who inhabits every one of his characters—the good, the bad, and those who swing back and forth.” Set in a bitterly benighted, mine-polluted corner of Virginia, Nitro Mountain follows a group of people bound together by alcohol, small-time crime and music. There’s Leon, a hapless bass player who can embroil himself in trouble just by getting out of bed in the morning. And his would-be girlfriend, Jennifer, who’s living with Arnett, the town’s most dangerous thug—and hoping Leon will help her poison him. And there’s Arnett himself, a psychopath for the ages—albeit so charming and deranged, so strikingly authentic, that he arrests the reader’s attention at first sight and holds it fast. His mirror image, a singer-songwriter named Jones, has his own moral issues, though at least he’s trying to be a good man. The bright if battered soul who pulls us through this story is Jennifer, a vulnerable yet strong woman struggling heroically to survive the endemic hopelessness and violence that have surrounded her since birth. Relentless? Yes, of course, but never remotely gratuitous. Every single moment is shot through with the pain and misery that inspire so much of the music these people love more than life itself.From the Hardcover edition.

No conviene adentrarse mucho en Nitro Mountain, ni cogerle demasiado cariño a nada. La compañía minera lio el petate y se largó con viento fresco, dejándolo todo manga por hombro. La tierra, abusada y devastada, infestada de túneles con cargas de dinamita aún por detonar, amenaza con volar por los aires en cualquier momento. Los paisanos de Bordon, Virginia, coexisten en ese desamparo. Consciente o inconscientemente, han recibido el funesto legado de lo que padeció la tierra. Un legado de violencia. Moteles astrosos, honky-tonks abyectos, alambiques ilegales y laboratorios de meta ocultos en la maleza. Ratas de bar, gente emboscada en la última trinchera de la dignidad y la decencia. Gente desesperada, con el corazón roto y nitroglicerina en las venas. El forraje perfecto para el tipo de canción country que compone la banda sonora de un mundo mermado por la codicia, donde la venganza llega a ser una forma de arte y en el que cada cual trata, a su manera, de sobrevivir. Leon, bajista curtido en los bares de bluegrass, tendría que haber sabido, siquiera por las viejas canciones del jukebox, que enrollarse con aquella camarera era lo peor que podía hacerse, en términos de supervivencia...