It's frontier country for Liam, an illegal immigrant from Limerick newly hatched in a sordid New Jersey dump. The underbelly of existence looms large in this graphic yet strangely humorous account of turning a bad track-record into survival. Liam has a dying mother back home and grim memories of a drunken father whom he let down by not running all the way to an athletics scholarship. Liam sells urine to get by, then signs on with a druggie and his 16-year-old pregnant girlfriend, and together they travel into the heart of hillbilly culture in the Appalachian mountains. You can almost smell the pine needless amid the poverty, and those other kinds of needles, too. This is a strong novel, finely-tuned to capture regional cadences and capture the frailty of youth on the brink of extinction. Shared despair gives way to strangers providing simple solace and you unwittingly find yourself drawn into this searing quest for redemption.