I'M FROM ELECTRIC PEAK

I'm From Electric Peak, Bud Smith, Artistically Declined Press, 2016, 130 pp

 

 

Basically a novella from an indie press and indie writer Bud Smith, this was the April, 2016 selection from The Nervous Breakdown Book Club. I have been reading one book a month from the club in an effort to at least not fall further behind since I am maintaining my subscription there. The books come once a month and keep piling up on their own special stack on my shelves. 

 

I'm From Electric Peak is a gritty romp of a read that I would have been sorry to miss. Kody Green is an orphan, a teen who escaped from the Mayweather home for wayward youth. He is in love with Teal Carticelli and plans to talk her parents out of sending her to Italy after they forced her to have an abortion. Kody was the father.

The story is wild, the violence is so over the top that it takes on cartoon proportions, the love between Kody and Teal is epic. Soon they are on the run, stealing cars to keep moving, having bittersweet but harrowing adventures across the country.

One blurb on the back of the book put it in the genre of outlaw love stories and it does have a Bonnie and Clyde essence. I would put it in the genre of young loser dudes of America. I loved every page and read it in a couple hours. It is worth any number of nonfiction books on the "broken heart of America" as another blurb called it.

I don't think I will ever forget Kody and Teal.