THE FLAWLESS SKIN OF UGLY PEOPLE

In the Georgia-based author’s debut, a sweet-natured misfit with a debilitating acne problem takes heroic steps to gain control of his life after his live-in girlfriend takes residence at a fancy fat-farm.

Hiding out from the judging eyes of a harsh and beauty-fixated world may have become a way of life for 37-year-old Hobbie, but since high school he at least had a partner with whom to share his exile, his long-time love Kari. With his cystic acne and her obesity, the couple traveled from suburb to suburb, never staying anywhere long enough to make friends or live up to their potential. Tellingly, both were molested by the same church deacon as young teens, shattering their self-images. So when Kari finally decides to make a change in her life and enrolls in a strict in-patient weight-loss program in North Carolina, Hobbie is understandably bereft. Left with their small dog Terry in rural Georgia, and forbidden to contact Kari, he subsists on regular missives that document her rapidly diminishing weight. Wondering when, or if, he will ever see her again, he is shaken out of his stupor when Terry is attacked by a bear. Hobbie fights off the hungry animal with an umbrella and wakes up with an impressive gash on his already ravaged face. Taken in by his de-facto father-in-law Roth—a church bookkeeper guilt-ridden over what happened to his daughter and Hobbie—he discovers a family secret that Kari and her father had been keeping from him. But it is when Roth is suddenly felled by a stroke that Hobbie decides to stop waiting and go after Kari. He hits the road with Roth, Terry and Kari’s estranged mom Sally, in a tragicomic quest to save her from herself. Along the way, Hobbie comes to terms with his past and starts to actually see a future. Full of insight and wonderfully complex characters, this deceptively slim work is emotionally satisfying—assuming readers can get past the frequent gross descriptions of Hobbie’s skin condition.

Gently comic depiction of love’s power to heal internal and external wounds.