Dan Denton's The Dead and The Desperate is a minor miracle
The factory life is littered with addiction, broken relationships and the mental illness bred on the poverty line. This book, a minor miracle, has all of that in spades. Dan Denton is a novelist with a poet's heart and here he delivers a dear john letter to that way of living in spare language that lays the devastation out like road maps for the damned. You can practically taste the factory dust, cheap cocaine and rotgut wine which flows across every page. This is a novel you live inside of because Dan lived it and now he's telling you about it. The story burns in the midnight grind and you burn along with it. It's a miracle because Dan survived and rose above his addictions and laid this work of art at our feet. This is high risk literature of the highest degree. Those who are faint of heart and soul need not apply just like the Midwest factories and bar rooms that bore it's sordid tales. The risk Is worth the price of admission, though. Take the plunge and let it whisper its secrets to you.