Described by the New Yorker as "one of the finest memoirs ever written." Crews describes growing up poor in rural Georgia during the Great Depression. It is a world filled with both tenderness and violence, comedy and tragedy, where nearly everyone he knew had suffered some form of physical harm or loss. It includes graphic descriptions of his own near-death experiences, such as contracting polio at age five and falling into a vat of nearly boiling water used for soaking dead hogs.

Described by the New Yorker as "one of the finest memoirs ever written." Crews describes growing up poor in rural Georgia during the Great Depression. It is a world filled with both tenderness and violence, comedy and tragedy, where nearly everyone he knew had suffered some form of physical harm or loss. It includes graphic descriptions of his own near-death experiences, such as contracting polio at age five and falling into a vat of nearly boiling water used for soaking dead hogs.