Featured Writer: Daniel Woodrell

It's a rare thing to encounter a writer whose every book is completely different, yet there is not a single one you don't love. It's also rare to discover a writer who just keeps getting better and better with each book, yet remains relatively unknown. Daniel Woodrell is just such a writer.

I have George Pelecanos to thank for introducing me to Daniel Woodrell. When I first discovered Pelecanos and read everything by him, I stumbled across a few interviews where he was talking about writers who influenced him and writers that he liked. I sought out every writer that he named (and even asked him for more at a reading of his) and Daniel Woodrell was by far my favorite of the bunch.

The latest book by Woodrell, "Winter's Bone", is by far his best effort to date. At it's heart it's detective fiction. However, like most of my favorite detective stories, the protagonist, a teenage girl named Ree Dolly, is forced into playing the role of detective by a natural cause: Her father has disappeared and failed to appear at court. If she can't either 1. find him or 2. prove he is dead, her family is going to lose their house.

The novel is set in Apalachia and is beautifully old. Comparisons were made to the novel "True Grit" by Charles Portis, but this novel is uniquely it's own. Ree plays a much stronger role in the events that occur than the young girl in True Grit, who enlists the help of others in her aid. Ree has no one to depend on but herself, and makes her way through a much different, and harsher world than that of True Grit.

If you start with "Winter's Bone," don't stop there. "Tomato Red" has what is one of the best first chapters of any novel that I've ever read. "The Death of Sweet Mister" is a unique look at a young man coming of age in the South. "Muscle for the Wing" and the rest of the Rene Shade series are all wonderfully told, economic novels.

Woodrell is the type of writer who I would pick up anything by without a moments hesitation. He is a gifted writer and storyteller who has earned my faith, and I bet if you give him the chance, he'll earn yours as well.