"Pull off the highway, get some gas, grab a Dr Pepper, linger, overhear the service station cashiers talk of local legends, quiet desperations, all the big puzzle pieces. The road is long, and this is just a brief break. But as you slide back in gear, it'll begin—you'll think of this tiny place, these giant people, all your life."
–Bud Smith, author of Teenager and Mighty
"Adam Van Winkle's Count the Dust is not only sharp as nails but Van Winkle has also managed an approach that's one of the most unique and original works of fiction I've read in the last decade. One percent of his creative genius would be enough to carry the rest us of through an entire career."
–Sheldon Lee Compton, author of Oblivion Angels
“I love these people, these people Van Winkle knows and loves, and I can’t think of any other writers short of the ghost of Larry Brown and William Gay who tells these stories as well as Van Winkle. These are the flyover state people, the people you pass by on your way through town never to see again. Stop and get a coffee at the one gas station in town that doubles as the grocery store and the post office. Get your car’s over-heating radiator looked at by the mechanic who doubles as volunteer sheriff’s deputy. These people are all related, whether by blood or by gossip or by tragedy. These are the people that don’t get their stories told—despite how important their stories are in understanding our country, our culture, our treatment of those born to the places we don’t want to think about. Count the Dust might be only based on a true story, but it’s as true as anything you’ll read. It’s a radio play that reads like a novel that plays like a documentary about the cycle of addiction, poverty, and violence in a small town, but also about stubborn survival. There’s the pills and alcohol and infidelity but there’s also the heart—the people who come back to pick up the pieces, the people who never leave because they can’t abandon their family, the people who keep scraping by because scraping by is all they know as means to keep on keeping on. Van Winkle was born to tell these people’s stories the way they need to be told and we’re all the better off for it.”
—Benjamin Drevlow, editor and chief of BULL
“I marvel at what Adam Van Winkle has created in his radio play novel, Count the Dust. This inventive story, told through perceptive and striking dialogue, reveals a few no-good sons of a bitches, some victims, and many survivors, all just getting by in a small borderland town where ‘a few buildings [are] pock marking the side of the two lane state highway that runs east and west.’ As the story alternates between two murders in 1967 and the fallout thirty years later, I am awestruck by Van Winkle's superlative, keen details throughout–an ordinary bandana turns into a magic cloth to calm a little girl, a father and son clear a wreck from the road in perfect unison. Vivid symbols of compassion and grace. This masterful novel, full of true crime, lyricism, and singular dialogue that rings so true, echoes the best of Shepard, in every respect.”
–Dan Crawley, author of Blur
“A fictional account of a real small-town murder based on the notes of a dead journalist, Adam Van Winkle’s Count the Dust is the best kind of art—unclassifiable and as brilliant as the stars on a crisp, clear Oklahoma night. Written as a radio play, Count the Dust is much more. Like Shepard’s best plays, Van Winkle’s work is a sensual time-machine, bouncing through time and the lives of a cast of vivid, intertwined characters dwelling in a tiny drive-by, cross-roads town. It’s an ugly story, made beautiful. Count the Dust begs to be read, performed, or burned into film.”
–JD Clapp, author of Poacher and Pills
“Count the Dust takes the reader on a 30-year journey of family, both blood and found, intertwined by tragedy. Adam Van Winkle shows his characters great care and compassion and resurrects the forgotten that are trying to survive along the Oklahoma–Texas border. Count the Dust is honest and unflinching as it explores addiction, class, and parenthood, while reminding us that hard work and the passage of time doesn’t always change our circumstances.”
–Katy Goforth, author of Anchored and Traveling Alone
“There was dust in my teeth, the heat of an Oklahoma wind in my face, and the smell of an old grease rag in my nostrils as I read Count the Dust. Through crisp dialogue and spot on setting notes, Van Winkle is a master at conveying the essence of hard lives in a hard place. Yet, beneath the generations of violence, booze, pills, and cigarettes, we are privy to a shimmering humanity.”
–François Bereaud, author of San Diego Stories and
A Question of Family
"Much like the profound character studies of Sam Shepard and the poignancy of Larry McMurtry's early works, Van Winkle masterfully creates a vivid portal through time, exploring generations marked by conflict, dependency, and hardship, all while maintaining deep empathy and unwavering candor. Experience the grit and the spirit along the Texas-Oklahoma as a harsh reality is transformed into something profoundly moving, revealing the inherent resilience within challenging lives. Count the Dust is more than just a book to be read; it's an immersive encounter."
–Daren Dean, author of Lovesick, The New Salvation
and Other Stories, Roads and The Black Harvest
“Small towns then, small towns now. Nothing has changed, and the dust is still there. Adam Van Winkle reveals his characters and their intertwined connections through a plain style and stripped-down dialogue that goes straight to the heart. Simple gestures of kindness—a story to soothe a scared child, a few cents to cover a purchase—and life changing decisions made without noise—an adoption, stepping away from drugs—rhythm the narrative of Count the Dust. There are echoes of Sam Shepard and John Fante, the color of long roads mostly deserted, and the lonely bell of remote gas station shops.”
–M.E. Proctor, author of Love You Till Tuesday
“Count the Dust is a haunting and wholly original work that resists easy classification. Van Winkle fuses the emotional depth of a novel with the raw urgency of a true crime thriller, crafting a beautifully ugly story that stays with you long after the final page.”
–Dan Russell, author of Poor Birds
“In a succinct radio play novel, Adam Van Winkle somehow recounts generations in a dusty town somewhere along the Texas-Oklahoma border in this tale that is one-part true crime, one-part family drama and a whole lot of heart. The story in Count the Dust captures the essence of the rural pockets that fill America, and the people who can't find their way out except in the most dismal ways. Van Winkle still manages to offer up hope that even in the smallest, most desolate town, one can find hope, connection and love. With interwoven narrative and dialogue, and a timeline that shifts between then (1967) and now (1997), Van Winkle's characters draw in readers and leave them wanting to know more. And true to his love of Western musical traditions, he even provides a playlist to go with the novel.”
–Melissa Flores Anderson, author of All of Then None of You
and A Body in Motion
–Bud Smith, author of Teenager and Mighty
"Adam Van Winkle's Count the Dust is not only sharp as nails but Van Winkle has also managed an approach that's one of the most unique and original works of fiction I've read in the last decade. One percent of his creative genius would be enough to carry the rest us of through an entire career."
–Sheldon Lee Compton, author of Oblivion Angels
“I love these people, these people Van Winkle knows and loves, and I can’t think of any other writers short of the ghost of Larry Brown and William Gay who tells these stories as well as Van Winkle. These are the flyover state people, the people you pass by on your way through town never to see again. Stop and get a coffee at the one gas station in town that doubles as the grocery store and the post office. Get your car’s over-heating radiator looked at by the mechanic who doubles as volunteer sheriff’s deputy. These people are all related, whether by blood or by gossip or by tragedy. These are the people that don’t get their stories told—despite how important their stories are in understanding our country, our culture, our treatment of those born to the places we don’t want to think about. Count the Dust might be only based on a true story, but it’s as true as anything you’ll read. It’s a radio play that reads like a novel that plays like a documentary about the cycle of addiction, poverty, and violence in a small town, but also about stubborn survival. There’s the pills and alcohol and infidelity but there’s also the heart—the people who come back to pick up the pieces, the people who never leave because they can’t abandon their family, the people who keep scraping by because scraping by is all they know as means to keep on keeping on. Van Winkle was born to tell these people’s stories the way they need to be told and we’re all the better off for it.”
—Benjamin Drevlow, editor and chief of BULL
“I marvel at what Adam Van Winkle has created in his radio play novel, Count the Dust. This inventive story, told through perceptive and striking dialogue, reveals a few no-good sons of a bitches, some victims, and many survivors, all just getting by in a small borderland town where ‘a few buildings [are] pock marking the side of the two lane state highway that runs east and west.’ As the story alternates between two murders in 1967 and the fallout thirty years later, I am awestruck by Van Winkle's superlative, keen details throughout–an ordinary bandana turns into a magic cloth to calm a little girl, a father and son clear a wreck from the road in perfect unison. Vivid symbols of compassion and grace. This masterful novel, full of true crime, lyricism, and singular dialogue that rings so true, echoes the best of Shepard, in every respect.”
–Dan Crawley, author of Blur
“A fictional account of a real small-town murder based on the notes of a dead journalist, Adam Van Winkle’s Count the Dust is the best kind of art—unclassifiable and as brilliant as the stars on a crisp, clear Oklahoma night. Written as a radio play, Count the Dust is much more. Like Shepard’s best plays, Van Winkle’s work is a sensual time-machine, bouncing through time and the lives of a cast of vivid, intertwined characters dwelling in a tiny drive-by, cross-roads town. It’s an ugly story, made beautiful. Count the Dust begs to be read, performed, or burned into film.”
–JD Clapp, author of Poacher and Pills
“Count the Dust takes the reader on a 30-year journey of family, both blood and found, intertwined by tragedy. Adam Van Winkle shows his characters great care and compassion and resurrects the forgotten that are trying to survive along the Oklahoma–Texas border. Count the Dust is honest and unflinching as it explores addiction, class, and parenthood, while reminding us that hard work and the passage of time doesn’t always change our circumstances.”
–Katy Goforth, author of Anchored and Traveling Alone
“There was dust in my teeth, the heat of an Oklahoma wind in my face, and the smell of an old grease rag in my nostrils as I read Count the Dust. Through crisp dialogue and spot on setting notes, Van Winkle is a master at conveying the essence of hard lives in a hard place. Yet, beneath the generations of violence, booze, pills, and cigarettes, we are privy to a shimmering humanity.”
–François Bereaud, author of San Diego Stories and
A Question of Family
"Much like the profound character studies of Sam Shepard and the poignancy of Larry McMurtry's early works, Van Winkle masterfully creates a vivid portal through time, exploring generations marked by conflict, dependency, and hardship, all while maintaining deep empathy and unwavering candor. Experience the grit and the spirit along the Texas-Oklahoma as a harsh reality is transformed into something profoundly moving, revealing the inherent resilience within challenging lives. Count the Dust is more than just a book to be read; it's an immersive encounter."
–Daren Dean, author of Lovesick, The New Salvation
and Other Stories, Roads and The Black Harvest
“Small towns then, small towns now. Nothing has changed, and the dust is still there. Adam Van Winkle reveals his characters and their intertwined connections through a plain style and stripped-down dialogue that goes straight to the heart. Simple gestures of kindness—a story to soothe a scared child, a few cents to cover a purchase—and life changing decisions made without noise—an adoption, stepping away from drugs—rhythm the narrative of Count the Dust. There are echoes of Sam Shepard and John Fante, the color of long roads mostly deserted, and the lonely bell of remote gas station shops.”
–M.E. Proctor, author of Love You Till Tuesday
“Count the Dust is a haunting and wholly original work that resists easy classification. Van Winkle fuses the emotional depth of a novel with the raw urgency of a true crime thriller, crafting a beautifully ugly story that stays with you long after the final page.”
–Dan Russell, author of Poor Birds
“In a succinct radio play novel, Adam Van Winkle somehow recounts generations in a dusty town somewhere along the Texas-Oklahoma border in this tale that is one-part true crime, one-part family drama and a whole lot of heart. The story in Count the Dust captures the essence of the rural pockets that fill America, and the people who can't find their way out except in the most dismal ways. Van Winkle still manages to offer up hope that even in the smallest, most desolate town, one can find hope, connection and love. With interwoven narrative and dialogue, and a timeline that shifts between then (1967) and now (1997), Van Winkle's characters draw in readers and leave them wanting to know more. And true to his love of Western musical traditions, he even provides a playlist to go with the novel.”
–Melissa Flores Anderson, author of All of Then None of You
and A Body in Motion