The Dead and the Desperate

Dan Denton's 2nd novel

There are novels that cleverly speak of life below the poverty line in working class America, and then there is The Dead & The Desperate, where Denton's main character becomes a begrudging Ohio resident and sudden and unexpected father, all while battling untreated mental illness and a nightmare vision board of addictions, and putting in dozens of overtime hours every week in hell scape low paying factory jobs. The main character chases poet's daydreams in dangerous dive bars, wrestles the factory machine everyday and finds friendship in a broken cast of characters like cheated on bartenders, gay bookstore owners, comfort seeking sex workers, and his fellow addicted factory brothers. There's homelessness, divorce, overdoses and death. Life in the Midwest factories under the poverty line, and falling deeper in every month.



"The return of authentic proletarian literature."-Richard Modiano Director Emeritus Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center, 2022 winner of the Joe Hill Prize for Labor Poetry



"With The Dead and the Desperate, Dan Denton bares his tortured soul for all to see and it's a harrowing yet beautiful sight to behold. A damn fine writer who should be applauded for his honesty and courage. Denton is not afraid to 'go there,' wherever 'there' really is. I'll be thinking about this book for the rest of my life."-Jason Webber, author of Purple Bananas: How Prince Saved Me