Items related to That's How I Roll: A Novel
Around here, even dying can be hard. Horribly hard. Only death itself comes easy. By easy, I mean frequent. Death happens so often that people regard it pretty much the same as the never-ending rain.
When life itself is hard, you have to be hard to live. Even a bitch will cull one of her own pups if she doesn't think he's going to be tough enough--she knows she's only got but so much milk, and there's none to waste.
Survival isn't some skill we learned--it's in all our genes. Nobody needed to be told to step aside when they saw the Beast coming. But not everyone stepped fast enough.
There's rock slides. Floods, too. Those are natural phenomena. You live here, you expect them. But just because a man's found under tons of rock, or floating in the river, doesn't mean his death was due to natural causes.
Folks drink a lot. Wives get beaten something fierce. Some of those wives can shoot pretty good. And some of their husbands never think it can happen to them, even when they're sleeping off a drunk.
There's supposed to be good and bad in everyone. Probably is. But here, it's the bad in you that's more often the most useful.
Like the difference between climate and weather. Most folks around here don't view a killing as good or bad--just something that happens, like a flood or a fire.
That's why a whole lot of bodies never get viewed at all.
For a man like me, this is a good part of the country to do my work. I take pride in the quality of my work, but I never deceive myself that every death at my hands is justified, never mind righteous or noble.
I never saw myself as ... much of anything, really. Just a crippled, cornered rat, trying to protect my little brother with whatever I can.
When life itself is hard, you have to be hard to live. Even a bitch will cull one of her own pups if she doesn't think he's going to be tough enough--she knows she's only got but so much milk, and there's none to waste.
Survival isn't some skill we learned--it's in all our genes. Nobody needed to be told to step aside when they saw the Beast coming. But not everyone stepped fast enough.
There's rock slides. Floods, too. Those are natural phenomena. You live here, you expect them. But just because a man's found under tons of rock, or floating in the river, doesn't mean his death was due to natural causes.
Folks drink a lot. Wives get beaten something fierce. Some of those wives can shoot pretty good. And some of their husbands never think it can happen to them, even when they're sleeping off a drunk.
There's supposed to be good and bad in everyone. Probably is. But here, it's the bad in you that's more often the most useful.
Like the difference between climate and weather. Most folks around here don't view a killing as good or bad--just something that happens, like a flood or a fire.
That's why a whole lot of bodies never get viewed at all.
For a man like me, this is a good part of the country to do my work. I take pride in the quality of my work, but I never deceive myself that every death at my hands is justified, never mind righteous or noble.
I never saw myself as ... much of anything, really. Just a crippled, cornered rat, trying to protect my little brother with whatever I can.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
From the Inside Flap:
Andrew Vachss returns with a deeply revealing new novel about a master assassin whose love forced him to kill his own conscience.
Esau Till's race is almost run. After pleading guilty to a series of homicides, he sits on death row, awaiting lethal injection. And writing his life story. But his memoir is no case study in tragedy--it's his one last chance to protect his brother Tory after he's gone. And, as too many have learned, when it comes to protecting his baby brother, Esau Till is a man without boundaries.
Esau's father was a widely feared beast who waited until his first girl child was "old enough to bleed" before killing his wife. In Esau's words: "When you're birthed out of your own sister--when her father is your father too--you know you're not going to come out right. Not you, not your life, not nothing."
When the genetic cards were dealt. Esau drew a genius IQ and a horribly crippled body. His brother Tory drew a "slow" mind and almost super-human strength. Very early on, Esau learned that the only way to guarantee his baby brother's safety was to make himself indispensable to certain people. A self-taught explosives expert, he became the top assassin for two rival local mobs. When a third mob attempted to recruit his brother, Esau took them all out, unaware that one of them was an undercover FBI agent.
Execution looms, but no prison can hold Esau's mind. Or his love. As the State prepares to take his life, Esau plots going all-in on the last and most deadly hand he will ever play.
About the Author:
Esau Till's race is almost run. After pleading guilty to a series of homicides, he sits on death row, awaiting lethal injection. And writing his life story. But his memoir is no case study in tragedy--it's his one last chance to protect his brother Tory after he's gone. And, as too many have learned, when it comes to protecting his baby brother, Esau Till is a man without boundaries.
Esau's father was a widely feared beast who waited until his first girl child was "old enough to bleed" before killing his wife. In Esau's words: "When you're birthed out of your own sister--when her father is your father too--you know you're not going to come out right. Not you, not your life, not nothing."
When the genetic cards were dealt. Esau drew a genius IQ and a horribly crippled body. His brother Tory drew a "slow" mind and almost super-human strength. Very early on, Esau learned that the only way to guarantee his baby brother's safety was to make himself indispensable to certain people. A self-taught explosives expert, he became the top assassin for two rival local mobs. When a third mob attempted to recruit his brother, Esau took them all out, unaware that one of them was an undercover FBI agent.
Execution looms, but no prison can hold Esau's mind. Or his love. As the State prepares to take his life, Esau plots going all-in on the last and most deadly hand he will ever play.
Andrew Vachss has been a federal investigator in sexually transmitted diseases, a social-services caseworker, and a labor organizer, and has directed a maximum-security prison for "aggressive-violent" youth. A lawyer in private practice since 1976, he represents children and youths exclusively. He is the author of more than two-dozen novels, including the Burke series; two collections of short stories; and a wide variety of other material, including song lyrics, graphic novels, essays, and a "children's book for adults." His books have been translated into twenty languages, and his work has appeared in Parade, Antaeus, Esquire, Playboy, the New York Times, and many other forums. A native New Yorker, he now divides his time between the city of his birth and the Pacific Northwest.
"About this title" may belong to another edition of this title.
- PublisherPantheon
- Publication date2012
- ISBN 10 0307379949
- ISBN 13 9780307379948
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages224
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