From the portrait of a man laid off from an auto plant--who fantasizes about eating the car he helped build--to the chilling first person account of a killing spree, the stories in Deliver Me From Nowhere illuminate the changing forces behind American discontent. Set against the expansive emptiness of the American landscape, Deliver Me From Nowhere presents a brave new view of the shifting territory between gender and class, power and death.

As the stories pass quickly beyond the "universal" themes--salvation, redemption, the search for joy--that hae transformed Springsteen's songs into anthems, its characters question whether redemption is possible or even desirable. In doing so Tennessee Jones' unforgettable people extract--sometimes to their own bereavement and awe--the thread of religion that runs through the American experience of rock and roll.

Tennessee Jones is the author of the long running zine Teenage Death Songs. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including LIT and Lodestar Quarterly. The flask in his back pocket reads "Hungry Heart."

30 city national tour--New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Chapel Hill, Asheville, Atlanta, Gainesville, Pensacola, New Orleans, Austin, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Eugene, Portland, Seattle, Vancouver...

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From Nebraska:

I found out a couple of weeks later that he was a trash slinger. I saw him one morning in my favorite alley right before school. He stopped to talk to me even though the man driving the garbage truck glared at him. His pants were greasy down the front and he wore big gloves. He smiled when he saw me walking up, like being elbow deep in trash was nothing to be ashamed of.
"Good morning," he said, grinning like a shark. "I figured I'd see you again soon. Town ain't that big."
"I didn't know you was no trash man," I said, to see if he'd flinch. "What would I do with some garbage man?"
He looked down and smiled. If he hadn't been wearing those filthy gloves he would have grabbed the back of his neck. "I ain't gonna be a trash man forever. This is temporary. You think every place you're in, you're gonna be there forever?"
"I hope I'm not in school forever."
"And you're not gonna be. Bet you're laying some big plans for yourself right now, ain't you?"
I didn't say anything. I looked at the interior slime of the garbage truck.
"George, man, c'mon. We gotta go," the driver yelled.
He jumped up on the back of the truck and held on. He looked at me, squinting in the bright sunlight. "What I want to know is how to get you to make me part of your plans."
I pretended to ignore what he said. "Why wasn't you slinging trash the other morning?"
"Why, I told you. This is temporary. I just started doing this."
I looked at him hard. I didn't really care whether or not he was a garbage man. It didn't make a difference to me like it would to some of the stupid girls I went to school with. I liked him, but I didn't want him to know that.
"What don't you come to the park on Clinton at 7 o clock? I might decide not to show up to meet you, though."
George smiled. "All right!" he shouted to the driver and they rumbled off. And that was how things started between us.
Everyone always asks if I knew what he was going to do. If I had any idea what he was capable of. I didn't really understand until we were out on the plains driving. I didn't understand until I was back in the same kind of silence my daddy had driven me through when I was a kid. I didn't understand until that first night out when the sun started to set and there were no lights for fifty miles.
I never showed him to my daddy. He would have taken one look at him and called him a sonofabitch and ran for his gun. I met him on street corners or in the park instead. There was one bar a friend of his run and he'd let me come in with George. These are the places we spent time together. I never thought to ask him why he didn't have a car.
School let out and we started to see each other more. I saw him during the day after his trash pick up while my daddy was at work. Finally I started letting him into the house through the back door. The first time we did it was in my bed. I bled a little on the sheets and washed them that afternoon. I was a virgin and the feel of him peeling away from my body was almost unbearable. It was a surprise that someone could get that close and then just leave again. I remember how the summer heat made the dust in the room swim.
Some days it seemed like the scent of us would be so thick that I was sure my father would smell it when he came home. I kept waiting for him to notice that something about me had changed. If he ever did, he never let on. The only time he looked at me sideways was when I put on dinner a little bit late.
I still don't really understand how people fall in love. I just know it happens. I know that sometimes it has a whole lot to do with sex. Or I guess it always has to do with it, whether it's happening or not. Sometimes when you can't have it it hangs in the air and makes everything mean more than it should.
That summer was different from any other summer. Maybe it was because of sex. I had never considered that my body was so separate from everyone else until I felt the sensation of trying to make that body disappear with someone. There was always a barrier between the two of us, no matter how much we sweated or cursed to knock it down.
Looking back on it, it seems like George was trying hard to get inside my head, like if he asked just the right question, like turning a lock with a key, that he would know everything about me. Or maybe I only say this because I was trying so damn hard to get in there myself. Being around George might have even been my way of doing it, by looking at the strange reflection of myself in someone I loved.
That summer I realized how big the sky is big in Nebraska, bigger maybe than any other place on earth. I wonder sometimes if it's just a big emptiness up there or if there's something else. It's hard to think it's just empty. If it is, what does that make me?
George always said he don't believe in God. Said he ain't got much hope or faith in anything. Laying out in the field one day with his hand in my hair, I asked him what he was living for. "Just this minute. Nothing else you can count on. I'm not laying any big plans. I might die anytime."
I thought this was a peculiar way to think. My daddy was telling me every minute about how I had to make good grades so I could get into a good college and make something out of myself. George acted like he�d never wanted to be anything more than just a man. Maybe that�s what made me fall in love with him, the way he didn't let his time didn't belong to any other person or any other place.