Hardscrabble Road

Hardscrabble Road is a 2012 coming of age novel written by American writer George Weinstein. The novel is set in the Depression era south with sharecropping, bootlegging, backbreaking work, betrayal, tragedy and a plot that weaves a tangible, living atmosphere from this period of American history.
Book overview
The book is set in South Georgia towards the end of the Great Depression with the onset of World War Two on the horizon. The youngest of four children, Roger "Bud" MacLeod is born with a birthmark on his face and develops a stutter at a young age. As a result, he is often bullied not only by his violent and abusive father, but also his immoral mother as well as students at school. The MacLeod family is rife with secrets, crippled in poverty and the father, Mance, while a violent and unpredictable bootlegger, never consumes alcohol and deeply despises drunks. Constantly needing control of his environment Mance enforces a strict seating arrangement during family meals in which the young Bud must sit at an angle where his father cannot see the side of his face with the birthmark.
The parents both mock and belittle the young child for his stutter and corporal punishment is doled out for even the slightest infringement. In addition to the school and his home life Bud is also to make to work the fields with the marginalized and subjugated African-American sharecroppers and despite the abuse he suffers from his father he sees his father riding through the field on horseback wearing his Stetson hat with his Colt handgun on his hip and it reminds him of his favorite cowboys from the western serial magazine stories he reads.
The book progresses over the next ten years as Bud deals with tragedies, triumphs, women, family, growing up and the haints from his childhood while learning to accept the abuses he suffered and unfair situations he found himself a part of were never his fault while gaining the confidence and assertiveness that eluded him as a child. The book has elements of the Southern Gothic style and comparisons have been drawn between Hardscrabble Road and Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina, and Jeannette Wall's memoir The Glass Castle.

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