Idiot Men

"Within the pages of Scott Gould's hilarious and touching Idiot Men you'll find a half-broken Chevy Nova, a bald cat, a Smokey the Bear costume, a Naugahyde recliner, a colon-cleaning machine strapped into the bed of an El Camino, six or seven dive bars, a lot of driving, and many many broken hearts. You'll also find a writer able to make you laugh out loud and move you deeply, often in the same sentence. This book is a blast." Nic Brown, author of Bang Bang Crash

"Yes, the protagonists in Idiot Men make questionable choices at times, but they do so with big-hearted, well-meant, honorable intentions. And if they're idiots, well, they're our idiots. Here's a great congregation of stories, told in Gould's unmistakable voice." George Singleton, author of The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs

"Scott Gould is a literary shapeshifter. A rough Southern man who writes about trucks, beer, dogs and doublewides with the finesse of a poet. Idiot Men is like the best country song you have ever heard. His writing breaks your heart but makes you rejoice that you are still alive to recover." Jane Stern, author of Ambulance Girl

"I was built for driving through the night," says the narrator of "Word of the Day," the opening story in Idiot Men. Encapsulated here is the thrill of Gould's newest book, which delivers the "nights" of lost love, cheap booze, and scarred hearts; but also the men who seem destined to "drive through" the darkness until they seize the dawn. Blending the bloody-knuckled prose of Larry Brown with the black wit of George Singleton, Scott Gould cements his reputation as the South's most unflinching storyteller." Dan Leach, author of Dead Mediums and Floods and Fires

"Scott Gould is the sort of storyteller you'd want sitting next to you on a delayed flight, or (more likely) at a bar. Just when he spins a tale so tall you call for the tab, he tells one that's sobering, and they'll both be on your mind the next morning." Peter Turchi, author of (Don't) Stop Me If You've Heard This Before

"Told in the voices of hapless, hilarious, and sometimes even heroic men, Scott Gould's latest collection offers entertaining portraits and inventive storylines. Sure, these guys are idiots, and they get entangled in some harebrained schemes, but they're also always relatable as they try to overcome broken hearts and jettisoned dreams." Virginia Pye, author of The Literary Undoing of Victoria Swann and Shelf Life of Happiness