Maggie Boylan

by Michael Henson

Overview

Finalist, 2019 Weatherford Award (Fiction) • A Great Group Reads Selection for National Reading Group Month from The Women’s National Book Association

Set in Appalachian Ohio amid an epidemic of prescription opiate abuse, Michael Henson’s linked collection tells of a woman’s search for her own peculiar kind of redemption, and brings the novel-in-stories form to new heights. Maggie Boylan is an addict, thief, liar, and hustler. But she is also a woman of deep compassion and resilience. The stories follow Maggie as she spirals through her addictive process, through the court system and treatment, and into a shaky new beginning.

In these masterful stories, we rarely occupy Maggie’s perspective, but instead gain a multilayered portrait of a community as we see other people’s lives bump up against hers—and we witness her inserting herself into their spheres, refusing to be rebuffed. The result is a prismatic view of a community fighting to stay upright against the headwinds of a drug epidemic: always on edge, always human.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780804040914
Publisher:	Ohio University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	NOOK Book
Pages:	152
File size:	914 KB

About the Author

Michael Henson is the author of four books of fiction and four collections of poetry. His prize-winning collection of linked stories, Maggie Boylan (Swallow Press), has been called “an important work of art, beautifully rendered.” His stories, poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in Still: The Journal, Appalachian Heritage, and Threepenny Review.

Table of Contents

Contents Maggie Boylan Black Friday The Way the World Is Timothy Weatherstone Liars All This Craziness Probation The Girl Who Spoke Foreign Acceptance Is the Answer Pillhead Hill

Editorial Reviews

05/07/2018
Trouble—much of it self-inflicted—follows Maggie Boylan, the unconventional hero of this powerful novel from Henson (Ransack). Maggie is “straight as a bullet, foul-mouthed, skinny, death-head-looking, Oxy-addled, thieving”—a folk hero for the fentanyl-ravaged heartland. Set in the present day in the small town of Wolf Creek, Ohio, Henson’s novel follows Maggie and those around her as the opioid epidemic upends their lives. She is a vivid, complex character, as likely to con a neighbor for $20 as she is to nurse an injured police officer back to health. But time is running out for her to change her ways. After she is framed for robbery, Maggie is given a choice by the court: treatment, parole, and monitored sobriety, or prison. Her addiction, which has already cost her custody of her children, her marriage, and countless friends, can no longer be ignored. In a series of self-contained stories, Henson uses an ensemble of narrators to tell Maggie’s saga. Despite its short length, Henson’s novel packs a punch: it’s harrowing, haunted, and often beautiful. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

Trouble—much of it self-inflicted—follows Maggie Boylan, the unconventional hero of this powerful novel from Henson (Ransack). Maggie is ‘straight as a bullet, foul-mouthed, skinny, death-head-looking, Oxy-addled, thieving’—a folk hero for the fentanyl-ravaged heartland.…Despite its short length, Henson’s novel packs a punch: it’s harrowing, haunted, and often beautiful.”—Publishers Weekly


“Henson’s stories are focused, relentless, and beautifully written.… I read every word of this book, and read it slowly. [Maggie is] a failure at almost everything—yet Henson allows her the subtlest of redemptions.…What a bal


“Michael Henson is one of the finest authors of literary fiction writing today. His Maggie Boylan stories give voice to those among us who are seldom heard. Maggie Boylan is an important work of art, beautifully rendered.”—


“Henson gets to the heart of working class and underclass people in ways that break your heart and then put it together again through the power of his art.”—Gurney Norman, author of Divine Right’s Trip and Kinfolks


“A devastating short fiction collection about the incestuous relationship between local law enforcement and drug dealers as well as the clients they both share—hapless and resourceful addicts, of which Maggie is queen. Henson’s collection is easily the best fictional account of the widespread meth and Oxy wreckage in Appalachia since Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone.”—Kate Flaherty, Ploughshares

From the Publisher

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