“When everything goes wrong, the worst thing you can do is think." Benjamin Whitmer's short sentences are punchy, grating, but as dry as Hack Turner's existence in 1986 in Plainview, Colorado. And the author of Pike or Escape (Gallmeister, 2012 and 2018) knows a thing or two about arid destinies, irrigated only by these bad alcohols from which the worst storms of anger germinate. These bursts of fists and disillusionment, Hack and his brother Whitey suffered a few downpours in their shabby town, a company town as they say in the United States to define these open-air dying houses articulated around a single company, here a plutonium factory with murderous safety standards.

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