Mighty, Mighty: A Novel

by Wally Rudolph

Overview

Mighty, Mighty is a modern day fable set in a crumbling metropolis riddled with urban poverty and violence. Dirty apartments, tattoo parlors, food kitchens – these are the markers of home for the struggling young adults around Chicago. Stefy is an artist at Ghost Town, the local tattoo shop, trying to provide for her younger sister Amanda and their ailing grandfather. Amanda is hoping for something better, seeking to escape a past riddled with addiction and an abusive relationship with Georgie. When he confronts her one drunken night at a dive bar, the situation turns violent: Amanda barely escapes with her life but Georgie lies dead on the bathroom floor. This one mistake puts the two sisters in the crosshairs of Georgie’s father, a twisted, corrupt ex-cop now out for revenge over the murder of his son. His quest for vengeance will make the neighborhoods of Chicago tremble, leaving no one untouched.

Mighty, Mighty is a harsh and realistic look at the struggle of two families desperately trying to get out from under the heavy boot of violence and poverty. Like the works of Richard Price and Dennis Lehane, the novel is a startling and accurate portrait of contemporary urban life

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781619026780
Publisher:	Catapult
Publication date:	10/01/2015
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Wally Rudolph, born in Canada to Jamaican parents, had a fifteen-year affair with illicit drugs that had him drop out of college and took him back and forth across the American Midwest. His fiction can be found in the literary journals Milk Money, Lines+Stars, Palooka, Slush Pile, The Brooklyner, and the anthology, Literary:Pasadena. A graduate of The Second City Conservatory in Chicago, he now resides with his family in Los Angeles. As an actor, he has appeared in numerous films and TV shows including Street Kings, Bang Bang, and Sons of Anarchy. Rudolph is also the author of Four Corners.

Editorial Reviews

08/24/2015
A novel of redemption and revenge, the latest from Rudolph (Four Corners) is a fast-paced yarn that starts solid before severe violence and illogical character decisions hamstring its final act. At the narrative’s core are Amanda and Stephy, two sisters living in Chicago. A tattoo artist, Stephy financially supports Amanda—her younger, unemployed sister—and their ailing grandfather. Meanwhile, Amanda, still reeling from years of drug and physical abuse at the hands of a dangerous ex-boyfriend, Georgie, finds herself drawn to Chance, a drifter working at Stephy’s shop. One evening, while the sisters and Chance party at the local watering hole, Georgie tracks his ex and sexually assaults her in a women’s bathroom. Amanda narrowly escapes, and a furious Chance beats Georgie to a bloody pulp. When Georgie’s injuries prove fatal, however, his father, a retired, crooked police officer, takes it upon himself to hunt down his son’s assailant after the local authorities refuse to pursue the case. Rudolph has a knack for crafting characters striving for recovery—from drugs, violence, and poverty. There is much to admire in Rudolph’s prose, but as Amanda and company seek escape from their crazed hunter, the bodies pile up, and the novel loses steam under the weight of cheap shocks. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for Mighty Mighty

"Like a fine tattoo artist blending blood and ink, Rudolph engraves portraits of complicated individuals onto the rough skin of Mighty, Mighty with no antiseptic — only the recalcitrant images of real people in pain . . . A masterful sophomore effort (following the success of Rudolph’s Four Corners), Mighty, Mighty is a love story of human detritus in concrete jungles, intricately inked into a scarred, yet majestic tattoo. Fans of Barry Hannah, Daniel Woodrell, Denis Johnson, and Pedro Juan Gutiérrez will find it hard to put this novel down."—Los Angeles Review of Books

"Mighty, Mighty is a gem: dark, hard, and filled with surprising beauty. It is also noir as hell, filled with the kind of people you always worried were down at that bar on the corner, waiting to turn on you." —Tod Goldberg, author of Gangsterland, Finalist for the 2014 Hammett Prize

"Mighty, Mighty is a hard-boiled hat trick of a novel: a searing family drama, a gripping crime thriller, and a raw, unflinching portrait of lives lived on America's violent edge." —Scott O'Connor, author of Half World and Untouchable

“Rudolph writes with personality, each page tattooing itself straight on your brain. Mighty Mighty has voice, that elusive, unteachable, and beautiful trait.” —Joshua Mohr, author of All This Life

 “Mighty Mighty lets it all hang out, a boldly affecting story written with flow and swagger, like the best hip-hop." —Mark Haskell Smith, author of Raw: A Love Story

 “A wild, violent ride of a page turner, Mighty, Mighty is also a thoughtful contemplation on how we love and grieve. A beautiful book that wears its messy, empathetic heart on its sleeve.” —Rob Roberge, author of The Cost of Living

Praise for Four Corners:

“Wally Rudolph's meth-and-cocaine-addled protagonists reel through a nonstop catastrophe of violence, flight, and revenge, too self-destructive to have anything more than a prayer--but they are real. They suffer and love and worship, however crazily. The action is urgent and compelling, the details are as crisp as the light that falls on Santa Fe. Wally knows the territory. And the territory is the human heart.” —Jack Butler, Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Living in Little Rock with Miss Little Rock

“Four Corners is a book that will stay with me for a long time, an outstanding first novel by a writer unafraid to scrape the crud off the floor of the human psyche. The best kind of crime fiction.” —Scott Phillips, author of The Ice Harvest and Hop Alley

"Rudolph means to stress that hard-luck people can be as hard to quit as hard drugs, and the tone the author gives Frank is appealingly flinty and worn...The strength of Frank’s voice…recalls down-and-out tales like Don Carpenter’s Hard Rain Falling or Daniel Woodrell’s Give Us a Kiss." —Kirkus

“...the plot is rendered in vivid, punch-drunk prose, colored by the cold, jaundiced sunlight of late December in the high desert, a land so imbued with harshness that even its snowflakes prick the flesh." —LA Weekly

From the Publisher