Daniel Woodrell's modern classic is an unforgettable tale of desperation and courage that inspired the award-winning film starring Jennifer Lawrence.  Ree Dolly's father has skipped bail on charges that he ran a crystal meth lab, and the Dollys will lose their house if he doesn't show up for his next court date. With two young brothers depending on her, 16-year-old Ree knows she has to bring her father back, dead or alive. Living in the harsh poverty of the Ozarks, Ree learns quickly that asking questions of the rough Dolly clan can be a fatal mistake. But, as an unsettling revelation lurks, Ree discovers unforeseen depths in herself and in a family network that protects its own at any cost. "The lineage from Faulkner to Woodrell runs as deep and true as an Ozark stream in this book...his most profound and haunting yet." -- Los Angeles Times Book Review "The lineage from Faulkner to Woodrell runs as deep and true as an Ozark stream in this book. . .his most profound and haunting yet."― Los Angeles Times Book Review "Sometimes brutal, sometimes mordantly funny, sometimes surprisingly sweet . . .I just didn't want WINTER'S BONE to end."― St. Louis Post Dispatch "Woodrell's Old Testament prose and blunt vision have a chilly timelessness that suggests this novel will speak to readers as long as there are readers."― New York Times Book Review "Daniel Woodrell has produced another stunner, a bleak, beautifully told story about the inescapable bonds of land and blood--fiction at its finest."― Kansas City Star "Heroines this inspiring don't come along often. When they do, they deserve our attention."― People "The plot of WINTER'S BONE is uncomplicated, yet it packs a kind of biblical, Old West, Cormac McCarthy wallop--hard and deep."― Cleveland Plain Dealer "A courageous, audacious, resourceful 16-year-old girl destined to enter the pantheon of literature's heroines."― Donald Harrington , Atlanta Journal Constitution Daniel Woodrell  is also the author of eight novels including The Maid’s Version, Winter’s Bone , and The Death of Sweet Mister, as well as the collection The Outlaw Album . He is the recipient of the PEN West Award, and five of his eight novels have been selected as New York Times  Notable Books of the Year. Three of his novels have been adapted for film, including the Oscar-nominated Winter’s Bone. He lived in the Ozarks near the Arkansas line with his wife, Katie Estill, and died in 2025. Winter's Bone By Daniel Woodrell Back Bay Books Copyright © 2007 Daniel Woodrell All right reserved. ISBN: 9780316066419 Chapter One REE DOLLY stood at break of day on her cold front steps and smelled coming flurries and saw meat. Meat hung from trees across the creek. The carcasses hung pale of flesh with a fatty gleam from low limbs of saplings in the side yards. Three halt haggard houses formed a kneeling rank on the far creekside and each had two or more skinned torsos dangling by rope from sagged limbs, venison left to the weather for two nights and three days so the early blossoming of decay might round the flavor, sweeten that meat to the bone. Snow clouds had replaced the horizon, capped the valley darkly, and chafing wind blew so the hung meat twirled from jigging branches. Ree, brunette and sixteen, with milk skin and abrupt green eyes, stood bare-armed in a fluttering yellowed dress, face to the wind, her cheeks reddening as if smacked and smacked again. She stood tall in combat boots, scarce at the waist but plenty through the arms and shoulders, a body made for loping after needs. She smelled the frosty wet in the looming clouds, thought of her shadowed kitchen and lean cupboard, looked to the scant woodpile, shuddered. The coming weather meant wash hung outside would freeze into planks, so she'd have to stretch clothesline across the kitchen above the woodstove, and the puny stack of wood split for the potbelly would not last long enough to dry much except Mom's underthings and maybe a few T-shirts for the boys. Ree knew there was no gas for the chain saw, so she'd be swinging the ax out back while winter blew into the valley and fell around her. Jessup, her father, had not set by a fat woodpile nor split what there was for the potbelly before he went down the steep yard to his blue Capri and bounced away on the rut road. He had not set food by nor money, but promised he'd be back soon as he could with a paper sack of cash and a trunkload of delights. Jessup was a broken-faced, furtive man given to uttering quick pleading promises that made it easier for him to walk out the door and be gone, or come back inside and be forgiven. Walnuts were still falling when Ree saw him last. Walnuts were thumping to ground in the night like stalking footsteps of some large thing that never quite came into view, and Jessup had paced on this porch in a worried slouch, dented nose snuffling, lantern jaw smoked by beard, eyes uncertain and alarmed by each walnut thum