Killing Rush

In Killing Rush John Hughes delivers a wonderfully detailed account of a whipsmart redneck’s last ditch effort to help his Ph.D.-wielding brother who is beset by sudden onset spiritual smithereens. On a road trip through the bottom of Florida, ostensibly in aid of the brother’s cock-eyed but soul-cleansing plan to terminate the coward Limbaugh, the brothers share and celebrate a hurricane of doubt, grief, self-loathing, and fast food. They take a deep dive into the loveably clownish latrine of Southern Culture, all the while spinning toward one brother’s death and the other’s return to roots—the conversion from credentialed academic back to homeboy redneck, meaning, in this case, that the survivor learns to forget the classroom and love the carport. In this shrewd new novel things fly apart deliciously. –Frederick Barthelme