Last Mountain Dancer, Hard-Earned Lessons in Love, Loss, and Honky-Tonk Outlaw Life by Chuck Kinder

The Press claims this is a novel, but it sure reads like a travelogue covering a trip that Chuck Kinder takes back to his home state of West Virginia while on sabbatical from his job teaching writing at the University of Pittsburg. Probably the Press feels like Kinder must surely be exaggerating, but how do you explain that this book cemented Kinder reputation as one of West Virgina’s “Outlaw Authors” along with the late Lee Maynard?  Probably some readers believe every word in it. Publishers Weekly exclaimed, “At the beginning of this bawdy, in your face, hugely entertaining bear of a book, Kinder explains that he intends to tell readers about his home state, West Virginia, land of ‘legendary mountain dancers, moonshiners, stupendous marijuana farmers, snakehandlers, blood-feudists, mystery midgets, mothmen [and] horny space aliens who drop into my home state as regular as clock-work in order to engage in extra-terrestrial sex with a multitude of juicy West Virginia majorettes’. . . .