The Devil All the Time

About this book

From the acclaimed author of Knockemstiffcalled powerful remarkable exceptional by the Los Angeles Timescomes a dark and riveting vision of America that delivers literary excitement in the highest degree. In The Devil All the Time Donald Ray Pollock has written a novel that marries the twisted intensity of Oliver Stones Natural Born Killers with the religious and Gothic overtones of Flannery OConnor at her most haunting. Set in rural southern Ohio and West Virginia The Devil All the Time follows a cast of compelling and bizarre characters from the end of World War II to the 1960s. Theres Willard Russell tormented veteran of the carnage in the South Pacific who cant save his beautiful wife Charlotte from an agonizing death by cancer no matter how much sacrificial blood he pours on his prayer log. Theres Carl and Sandy Henderson a husband-and-wife team of serial killers who troll Americas highways searching for suitable models to photograph and exterminate. Theres the spider-handling preacher Roy and his crippled virtuoso-guitar-playing sidekick Theodore running from the law. And caught in the middle of all this is Arvin Eugene Russell Willard and Charlottes orphaned son who grows up to be a good but also violent man in his own right. Donald Ray Pollock braids his plotlines into a taut narrative that will leave readers astonished and deeply moved. With his first novel he proves himself a master storyteller in the grittiest and most uncompromising American grain.