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Dope and Vodka and Cigarettes, and Not Shaving Her Legs
Paperback
Publisher: Roadside Press
Published: Jun 1 2026
Pages: 208
Weight: 0.63
Height: 0.48 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Harry works as a nurse while taking classes to become a social worker. He cares for his elderly father and stepmom in the old mill town where he grew up in a trailer. In short chapters that replicate the fractured years of his early life, Harry tells the story of being raised by a father absent from endless work, a mom lost in hard drugs, and the criminals and samaritans that passed through their lives. This is the story of empty stomachs and cheap clothes, potato chips for dinner and mismatched socks. The way to succeed in the busted world of Harry's youth world was to make the Honor Roll then steal snacks on the way home from school. DOPE AND VODKA AND CIGARETTES, AND NOT SHAVING HER LEGS is a love song to the unloveable, a memory board stuck together with needles then propped up with empty bottles of booze. Everything is forgiven through story, and Harry wants to tell it all in the best way that the worst ways allow.
If you drive to the very center of the rustbelt, go past the three dozen abandoned factories, through the boarded up downtown, on out beyond the desperation and into the middle of that one ramshackle trailer park with a reputation, you will find Dave Newman's new novel, DOPE AND VODKA AND CIGARETTES, AND NOT SHAVING HER LEGS. Written in prose that often sings like poetry, the book nearly runs a full gamut of desperation while maintaining a soft grip on your heart with its often delusional hope, all the way to the end. Further proof that Newman is amongst our best living working class writers.-Dan Denton, author of The Dead and the Desperate and others
Newman writes about low wage work and bars and drunks and strippers and other people on the ropes with incredible heart and humor. He's capable of being profound and melancholy and serious in the same line. In Newman's world, wonder remains. Even in the worst moments, broke, lonely, there's a chance of things breaking right or there's Whitman's example: go do something good. So, pal, go do something good: buy this book.-William Boyle, author of Saint of the Narrow Streets
The incomparable Dave Newman delivers a noir-tinged novel infused with pathos and his signature quirky wit. Dope and Vodka and Cigarettes, and Not Shaving Her Legs is a brilliant foray into the formative years that shape us-and the ways parenting can nurture or destroy. -Alexis Rhone Fancher, author of 13 published books, including Erotic: New & Selected (NYQ), Sinkhole (MacQueen's), and The Dead Kid Poems, (Moon Tide Press).
Truly one of the best writers of his generation.-Gerald Locklin, author of Charles Bukowski: a Sure Bet
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