Ravage vs. HopeNick Reding, author of The Last Cowboys at the End of the World (2001), invites readers without a faint heart to read his latest, Methland : the Death and Life of an American Small Town. The book, in stark, consistently heartbreaking, and often anger-inducing detail, chronicles the effects of the methamphetamine drug trade on the rural town of Oelwein, Iowa.
Though Methland does offer a theory of what and who is to blame for the meth trade’s infiltration into heartland life (globalization, conglomerates, economic hardship, government and human weakness); the story is much more the story of Oelwein’s people.
If you read bestsellers and Oprah-recommended Beautiful Boy : a Father's Journey Through His Son's Meth Addiction by David Sheff or Tweak : Growing Up on Methamphetamines by Nic Sheff, Methland is a 5-time patron-recommended book you might like to add to your reading list.
