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When USA TODAY asked Dennis Lehane what was on his summer reading list, the author of Mystic River raved about Daniel Woodrell.
"I don't even know what (his) novel's about, but I'm going to buy it the day it's published," Lehane said this summer.
Now Lehane -- who called Woodrell "the least-known major writer in the country" -- can pick up Winter's Bone (Little, Brown, $22.99), published this week.
Who is this writer's writer, who has a cult following and counts authors Annie Proulx and Roddy Doyle among his fans?
Early reviews for Winter's Bone have been raves: Kirkus said it has "echoes of Inman's journey in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, the homicidal poetry of Cormac McCarthy's tense narratives." Booklist said of the novel's heroine, Ree Dolly: "Think of not just Mattie Ross in True Grit but also Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird."
Woodrell, 53, lives with his novelist wife, Katie Estill, in West Plains, Mo., in the Ozark Mountains, where he was born. The region's brutal winters, rocky topography and lost-in-time atmosphere play a major role in his work.
Under the Bright Lights, his first novel, was published 20 years ago, but Woodrell was writing for 10 years before that. "I loaded trucks, did roofing, 7-Eleven clerking, whatever I could do that left me plenty of time to read and write."
Winter's Bone is the story of tenacious Ree Dolly, who at 16 is the glue that holds her family together. Her mother is mentally ill; looking after two younger brothers is left up to Ree. The family's poverty worsens when Ree's drug-dealer father skips bail.
It is Ree's relentless search for her father that drives the narrative. She endures hunger, frigid nights out of doors and a vicious beating at the hands of local women.
Woodrell says the crystal meth trade and the lawlessness he describes in the book in part reflect the culture of a clannish people who live by their own rules.
"I've seen fingers bitten off in women fights around here," he says. "One of the families that partially informs the Dollys is rather notorious for their women beating up women who look at their men sideways."
Hollywood has taken notice of Woodrell's work. Ang Lee directed the 1999 film Ride with the Devil, based on Woodrell's Civil War novel Woe to Live On. His latest novel has been optioned by Debra Granik, writer/director of Down to the Bone, who will produce Winter's Bone in conjunction with Anonymous Content (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind).
Things got a little hairy last month while Woodrell helped a production crew scout locations.
"They managed to draw a warning shot for photographing," Woodrell says. "I said, 'These are backwoods people and they might not want you photographing them.' And one of them didn't."
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