About This Book
"The Cooter Farm will remind readers of John Irving one minute, Joyce Carol Oates the next. An altogether remarkable debut." - Gene Lyons, Entertainment Weekly
"Dickens and Irving are high standards against which to measure any novel, let alone a debut. It's a tribute to The Cooter Farm that those are exactly the comparisons invokes." - Steven Kane, Los Angeles Daily News
"'The Cooter Farm' is a novel that defies categorization. It brings together elements as diverse as the black humor of Flannery O'Connor, the rude hilarity of Kurt Vonnegut, and the nostalgia for childhood of Harper Lee. A truly amazing first novel." - Sharon Lloyd Stratton, Richmond Times Dispatch
When young Ollie Cooter tries to come to grips with the often crazy, sometimes sinister, world of his family's dairy farm in upstate New York, he gradually learns the complexities of human nature. Bewildered by his mother's flight from the confines of the farm and the exaggerated hypochondria of her bull-semen-selling husband, Ollie seeks respite and comfort from the only member of the Cooter clan he trusts, his aunt, Mary Jean, three years his senior.
Bound to her by blood, admiration, and love, Ollie joins in her determined attempts to exorcise the evil she believes controls the Cooter world. As the two explore and expand their knowledge of each other - and of the lives of other members of this rural community - Ollie leaves childhood behind. The terrifying chain of events he witnesses during his eleventh year irrevocably alter him and his family forever.
