A Body's Just as Dead

In the town of Drayton, Alabama, the once high-paying manu-facturing jobs have been replaced by nail salons and bail bonds. Pete-O Hemper,a diabetic amputee in a wheelchair, feels betrayed by the America he onceloved and believed in. On a steady diet of hate radio, he blames everyonearound him for trying to remake his country into a place where men like himare no longer in control. Pete-O's nephew, Robert, jailed on assault charges,is desperate for money and hatches a plan to rob a meth lab. Pete-O's sister,Lilith Ann, the exhausted matriarch of this family, struggles to hold everyonetogether when Pete-O brings a Chinese bride to America with a past as darkas his. Sometimes darkly funny, A Body's Just as Dead captures the 21st centuryfrustration of small-town families who feel the American Dream is in shredsand resent having to share its remnants with people who "aren't like us."