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David Rhodes's debut novel was published by Atlantic, Little-Brown in 1972, when he was just twenty-six years old. It is the tale of two cities: Des Moines, home to the Sledge family, a seedy lot of characters fathered by a railroader who drinks himself to death on a dare; and a metaphorical "City" built by religious fanatics at the bottom of a gigantic hole in the ground and teeming with cannibalistic heroin addicts too paralyzed by religious guilt to escape.
Rhodes used an early draft of a portion of the novel as his writing sample when he applied for admission to the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He was accepted into the program, where he completed the manuscript, which was bought by Atlantic, Little-Brown before he even graduated.