What do you think?
Rate this book
Hillbilly Grit: A Novel Based on Family History
The Autrys believe the meek don’t inherit.
Feral mean and nail hard, they pass their legacy down through Prohibition’s bedlam, the Great Depression’s hunger, and the Dust Bowl’s choking Dirty Thirties.
In 1898, Solomon is forgetting. Losing pieces of himself. His mind. His memory. His temper. What begins in the Arkansas hills with silence and small cruelties erupts in fire and blood, sending his wife, Dora, running for her life with their infant in her arms.
From the wreckage of that loss, the Autrys close ranks, brace up, and move on with backbone, but the stain of violence and insanity hovers, whispering. Dogged by rumor, enraged by slight, each generation lashes out, adding hurt to their heritage.
Those Autrys, the neighbors say, they’re hot-tempered, fast to make a fist.
Bunch of cutthroats.
Perfect for readers of stark, character-driven historical fiction grounded in truth, and for fans of Larry Brown, Kent Haruf, and Matt Bondurant.
Feral mean and nail hard, they pass their legacy down through Prohibition’s bedlam, the Great Depression’s hunger, and the Dust Bowl’s choking Dirty Thirties.
In 1898, Solomon is forgetting. Losing pieces of himself. His mind. His memory. His temper. What begins in the Arkansas hills with silence and small cruelties erupts in fire and blood, sending his wife, Dora, running for her life with their infant in her arms.
From the wreckage of that loss, the Autrys close ranks, brace up, and move on with backbone, but the stain of violence and insanity hovers, whispering. Dogged by rumor, enraged by slight, each generation lashes out, adding hurt to their heritage.
Those Autrys, the neighbors say, they’re hot-tempered, fast to make a fist.
Bunch of cutthroats.
Perfect for readers of stark, character-driven historical fiction grounded in truth, and for fans of Larry Brown, Kent Haruf, and Matt Bondurant.
265 pages, Kindle Edition
Published January 3, 2026
2 people are currently reading
3 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 14, 2025
Tough as barbed wire and just as gripping.
Hillbilly Grit is a family saga that grabs you from the get-go and doesn’t let up. The novel knows exactly what it’s doing: preserving a family’s truth while refusing to pretty it up. From the opening chapter, readers feel its commitment to lineage, labor, and the harsh arithmetic of rural survival.
Autry’s unadorned yet vivid prose is given in a robust register that suits the setting. It’s distilled to the sensory essentials—raw mornings, stiff joints, cracked milk buckets, cold stoves that don’t wake up when the family does. The book doesn’t romanticize poverty or grit, nor does it sensationalize them. Instead, it shows how the small violence accumulates: illness, weather, rancor, misjudgments, and the unpredictable swings of a man losing his grip on himself.
The novel’s greatest strength is its sense of continuity. Trauma isn’t a plot device here—it’s inheritance. Autry charts with care how violence, silence, mental illness, and economic precarity pass down a family line. The tagline—The Autrys believe the meek don’t inherit—isn’t just clever; it’s a thematic compass. Everyone is shaped by the choices of the generation before, and no one escapes the cost of survival.
For this reader, a few scenes in the middle of the book linger longer than necessary, and some transitions soften the narrative’s drive. But even when the pacing slows, the authenticity never wavers. One feels the weight of the work, the hunger, the weather, the social expectations pressing down on every character.
Told with unhurried confidence, Hillbilly Grit rewards a patient reader and lingers long after—like the smell of woodsmoke in winter clothes.
Hillbilly Grit is a family saga that grabs you from the get-go and doesn’t let up. The novel knows exactly what it’s doing: preserving a family’s truth while refusing to pretty it up. From the opening chapter, readers feel its commitment to lineage, labor, and the harsh arithmetic of rural survival.
Autry’s unadorned yet vivid prose is given in a robust register that suits the setting. It’s distilled to the sensory essentials—raw mornings, stiff joints, cracked milk buckets, cold stoves that don’t wake up when the family does. The book doesn’t romanticize poverty or grit, nor does it sensationalize them. Instead, it shows how the small violence accumulates: illness, weather, rancor, misjudgments, and the unpredictable swings of a man losing his grip on himself.
The novel’s greatest strength is its sense of continuity. Trauma isn’t a plot device here—it’s inheritance. Autry charts with care how violence, silence, mental illness, and economic precarity pass down a family line. The tagline—The Autrys believe the meek don’t inherit—isn’t just clever; it’s a thematic compass. Everyone is shaped by the choices of the generation before, and no one escapes the cost of survival.
For this reader, a few scenes in the middle of the book linger longer than necessary, and some transitions soften the narrative’s drive. But even when the pacing slows, the authenticity never wavers. One feels the weight of the work, the hunger, the weather, the social expectations pressing down on every character.
Told with unhurried confidence, Hillbilly Grit rewards a patient reader and lingers long after—like the smell of woodsmoke in winter clothes.
January 8, 2026
The story leaps off the page in all its arresting complexity and darkness. Autry writes with a formidable precision and richness; not a word is out of place, and I find myself drawn to linger on the beauty of the prose, even as the engrossing plot and meticulously drawn characters compel me to read further.
January 16, 2026
Hillbilly Grit is a very character driven story with excellent historical representation. However, if you are seeking a plot or a character to carry you through the story, you will be disappointed. The book blurb mentions the tragedy of Solomon and Dora. It's very compelling. It’s also over in the first third of the book. The echoes of what happened affect the rest of the story, which might be the point, but that isn’t the story. This is a bunch of short tales of one family that live in the shadow of that violent act.
Positives: Marynell Autry writes compelling prose and fleshed out characters. I deeply cared about Solomon and Dora for as long as they were in the story. I cared about other characters too, for a time. The settings are vivid. I could see the scenes in my mind like I was watching a movie. If you enjoy storytelling that helps you experience what late 19th and early 20th century life was like, you will enjoy this.
Negatives: As I said, Dora's and Solomon's story ends really early in the book. I remembered reading the end of Dora's last chapter, then starting the next chapter and wondering if I had missed something. She was just gone. This happens with a lot of characters in the book. You follow one character for a while then hop to a new character. Sometimes you go back to a character you were following before, others times a character you really liked just dies off page. It made it hard to connect with any character, because I didn’t know if they were going to hang around.
There is no real plot to this book. It’s a bunch of stories about this family told in rambling vignettes. Maybe that is the intention. The author is just telling a bunch of stories about her family. It just didn’t seem to have a solid core to the story. What do we learn from all this? This is based on real life, and yes real life doesn’t have themes built into our experiences. Sometimes things just happen. Still, I have read other historical fiction and themes did emerge in those books. Stories are interesting, but the themes behind them are the reason we read them over and over again.
The end of the book surprised me. It just comes out of nowhere. It doesn’t feel like an end to the book. It just feels like a spot the author thought would be a good place to stop.
I’m likely not the audience for this book. I was entertained the whole way though, and that says something about the author's talent. Generally, when the writing is good enough to keep someone who wouldn't normally pick up that type of book interested that shows skill. Marynell Autry is a really good writer. If the positives I mentioned sound like your type of story, then I doubt the negatives will bother you. However, if you are looking for an engaging plot or themes, I'd pass.
Positives: Marynell Autry writes compelling prose and fleshed out characters. I deeply cared about Solomon and Dora for as long as they were in the story. I cared about other characters too, for a time. The settings are vivid. I could see the scenes in my mind like I was watching a movie. If you enjoy storytelling that helps you experience what late 19th and early 20th century life was like, you will enjoy this.
Negatives: As I said, Dora's and Solomon's story ends really early in the book. I remembered reading the end of Dora's last chapter, then starting the next chapter and wondering if I had missed something. She was just gone. This happens with a lot of characters in the book. You follow one character for a while then hop to a new character. Sometimes you go back to a character you were following before, others times a character you really liked just dies off page. It made it hard to connect with any character, because I didn’t know if they were going to hang around.
There is no real plot to this book. It’s a bunch of stories about this family told in rambling vignettes. Maybe that is the intention. The author is just telling a bunch of stories about her family. It just didn’t seem to have a solid core to the story. What do we learn from all this? This is based on real life, and yes real life doesn’t have themes built into our experiences. Sometimes things just happen. Still, I have read other historical fiction and themes did emerge in those books. Stories are interesting, but the themes behind them are the reason we read them over and over again.
The end of the book surprised me. It just comes out of nowhere. It doesn’t feel like an end to the book. It just feels like a spot the author thought would be a good place to stop.
I’m likely not the audience for this book. I was entertained the whole way though, and that says something about the author's talent. Generally, when the writing is good enough to keep someone who wouldn't normally pick up that type of book interested that shows skill. Marynell Autry is a really good writer. If the positives I mentioned sound like your type of story, then I doubt the negatives will bother you. However, if you are looking for an engaging plot or themes, I'd pass.
January 3, 2026
This is an understated yet startling chronicle of desperate lives and simple choices gone wrong under the unrelenting pressure of rural America from the late 1890s to the 1930s. Despair, violence, and hope intermingle in the daily quest to stay warm, dry, and fed. Family identity and obligations provide a lattice that the individual characters cling to with varying degrees of success.
I grew up – and my maternal ancestors – grew up not far from where the novel takes place in a creaking house built on the prairie in 1909. The tale reminded me of the stories I heard as a child. Fathers walking out, death during childbirth, leaking roofs, failed crops, hiding in storm cellars from tornadoes…not knowing where the next meal would come from. Those were hard times, and hard times can twist things around.
Early in the novel, the narrator notes of one of the main characters: “Columbus preached drinking was a sin, but then his son was young, and he didn’t understand how right and wrong tangled up.” In the hope-crushing depression, the trials of prohibition, insidious racism, and then the choking red dust of Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl, right and wrong surely do get all tangled up in this remarkable narrative.
The prose reminded me of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, though a bit more accessible. In Hillbilly Grit, the author’s style is concise, unflinching, and echoes that time. The descriptions brought back my own memories, and the words are more impactful for it. Beyond the descriptions, the sentences capture emotions as few writers can. From the text: “She’d ask the stonecutter to add her name: Dora, Bereaved Wife and Mother, and under the place for the date of her death: Forsaken by God.”
As the sequence of events unfolds, forsaken by God, indeed. Hillbilly Grit won't leave you on Cloud Nine. It will give you an intimate view of the (difficult) lives and (hard) times of the Autry family in that place in those days.
I was offered an advanced copy of this work in exchange for an honest review. I got the better end of this deal, and I am looking forward to the continuation of the story. Highly recommended.
I grew up – and my maternal ancestors – grew up not far from where the novel takes place in a creaking house built on the prairie in 1909. The tale reminded me of the stories I heard as a child. Fathers walking out, death during childbirth, leaking roofs, failed crops, hiding in storm cellars from tornadoes…not knowing where the next meal would come from. Those were hard times, and hard times can twist things around.
Early in the novel, the narrator notes of one of the main characters: “Columbus preached drinking was a sin, but then his son was young, and he didn’t understand how right and wrong tangled up.” In the hope-crushing depression, the trials of prohibition, insidious racism, and then the choking red dust of Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl, right and wrong surely do get all tangled up in this remarkable narrative.
The prose reminded me of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, though a bit more accessible. In Hillbilly Grit, the author’s style is concise, unflinching, and echoes that time. The descriptions brought back my own memories, and the words are more impactful for it. Beyond the descriptions, the sentences capture emotions as few writers can. From the text: “She’d ask the stonecutter to add her name: Dora, Bereaved Wife and Mother, and under the place for the date of her death: Forsaken by God.”
As the sequence of events unfolds, forsaken by God, indeed. Hillbilly Grit won't leave you on Cloud Nine. It will give you an intimate view of the (difficult) lives and (hard) times of the Autry family in that place in those days.
I was offered an advanced copy of this work in exchange for an honest review. I got the better end of this deal, and I am looking forward to the continuation of the story. Highly recommended.
January 5, 2026
MOVE OVER JOHN STEINBECK
Marynell Autry is a breathtaking writer of historical fiction. This book is unputdownable, a page turner, par excellence. I stayed up half the night reading it.
It's a story of the hard living Autry family in rural Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, spanning over 100 years. It takes us from before World War 1, through to the Great Depression and the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. With characters richly drawn, I wanted to know what happened next, and then what happened after that.
In the crushing poverty of the depression, prohibition, family violence and insanity, you get caught up in the hopes and fears of these people. For me, this was especially true with the Dora character. I won't give too much away, but this young mother finds herself burying loved ones in the first chapters.
In Chapter 1, Dora's husband, Solomon, discovers their dog, Hawken, has been killing their chickens. He leaves her and the children after supper, with plans to kill their dog. When he returns, he tells them what he did and why. This is what Marynell Autry writes:
"[The two daughters] wailed. Dora embraced her girls, pulling them close and whispering comfort. It’s like sleeping, she told them, it doesn’t hurt. They sobbed themselves limp, and she tucked them in with good night kisses before blowing out the lamp.
"One more whimper broke the silence as she made her way to the kitchen. She refused to show up at her in-laws empty-handed, and she had eight chickens to cook and can.
"Later that night, the children were sleeping and the house was quiet. Solomon pulled her against him in bed and she wept into his shoulder."
The story moves right through Pretty Boy Floyd making an appearance. Ms. Autry's sequel, I'm told, will be coming down the pike. I look forward to it with eager anticipation.
Highly recommend this book.
Marynell Autry is a breathtaking writer of historical fiction. This book is unputdownable, a page turner, par excellence. I stayed up half the night reading it.
It's a story of the hard living Autry family in rural Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas, spanning over 100 years. It takes us from before World War 1, through to the Great Depression and the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. With characters richly drawn, I wanted to know what happened next, and then what happened after that.
In the crushing poverty of the depression, prohibition, family violence and insanity, you get caught up in the hopes and fears of these people. For me, this was especially true with the Dora character. I won't give too much away, but this young mother finds herself burying loved ones in the first chapters.
In Chapter 1, Dora's husband, Solomon, discovers their dog, Hawken, has been killing their chickens. He leaves her and the children after supper, with plans to kill their dog. When he returns, he tells them what he did and why. This is what Marynell Autry writes:
"[The two daughters] wailed. Dora embraced her girls, pulling them close and whispering comfort. It’s like sleeping, she told them, it doesn’t hurt. They sobbed themselves limp, and she tucked them in with good night kisses before blowing out the lamp.
"One more whimper broke the silence as she made her way to the kitchen. She refused to show up at her in-laws empty-handed, and she had eight chickens to cook and can.
"Later that night, the children were sleeping and the house was quiet. Solomon pulled her against him in bed and she wept into his shoulder."
The story moves right through Pretty Boy Floyd making an appearance. Ms. Autry's sequel, I'm told, will be coming down the pike. I look forward to it with eager anticipation.
Highly recommend this book.
December 10, 2025
Here’s a great novel that will make your chores wait and keep you past a decent bedtime.
Hillbilly Grit is a generational saga set in Arkansas and Oklahoma, spanning decades between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Being from outside the U.S., I have limited knowledge of the setting in physical and historical terms. Yet every line in Hillbilly Grit transported me there: I fled with Dora among hills and junipers when her husband, Solomon Autry, turned violent over spells of memory loss; held my breath when nephew Columbus lost his father to the vicious whim of a fourteen-year-old. Would the Autry temper make new victims of Columbus and his young family? And what of fiery Ivor, his son, dreaming of California before love and lust put him where he won’t belong?
I have lived on the Autry farms, shared their frozen winters and dry summers, breathed their grit. The characters were alive, raising their young, whispering, threatening. Some cautious, some brash, some tragic. All human.
Marynell Autry has given readers more than historical fiction or family history. She has given us a slice of life in the most earthy and lyrical prose.
I highly recommend this book and eagerly await Book Two, Trash Man.
Hillbilly Grit is a generational saga set in Arkansas and Oklahoma, spanning decades between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Being from outside the U.S., I have limited knowledge of the setting in physical and historical terms. Yet every line in Hillbilly Grit transported me there: I fled with Dora among hills and junipers when her husband, Solomon Autry, turned violent over spells of memory loss; held my breath when nephew Columbus lost his father to the vicious whim of a fourteen-year-old. Would the Autry temper make new victims of Columbus and his young family? And what of fiery Ivor, his son, dreaming of California before love and lust put him where he won’t belong?
I have lived on the Autry farms, shared their frozen winters and dry summers, breathed their grit. The characters were alive, raising their young, whispering, threatening. Some cautious, some brash, some tragic. All human.
Marynell Autry has given readers more than historical fiction or family history. She has given us a slice of life in the most earthy and lyrical prose.
I highly recommend this book and eagerly await Book Two, Trash Man.
Review of advance copy received from Author
In Hillbilly Grit, Marynell Autry delivers a visceral and richly immersive saga that refuses to look away from the brutal realities of the American frontier. Drawing on family stories spanning from 1898 through the Great Depression, this novel masterfully portrays the 'harsh calculations of survival' and the thin, often-porous boundaries between what is right and what is necessary.
It is a raw, unvarnished portrait of endurance that explores how history and trauma lodge themselves in a family’s DNA. Autry balances unflinching realism with a deep devotion to family and tradition, creating a narrative that moves with the tension of a literary thriller. A powerful, haunting meditation on the cost of survival and the love that endures when everything else is stripped away.
It is a raw, unvarnished portrait of endurance that explores how history and trauma lodge themselves in a family’s DNA. Autry balances unflinching realism with a deep devotion to family and tradition, creating a narrative that moves with the tension of a literary thriller. A powerful, haunting meditation on the cost of survival and the love that endures when everything else is stripped away.
January 12, 2026
Marynell Autry’s 1930s era historical novel, Hillbilly Grit, opens with a heartbreaking domestic incident that grabs your attention and keeps you turning pages. Using plain, easy to read prose, filled with fascinating detail, Autry does a masterful job of transporting the reader into the bygone world of Depression-era farming life. It’s not an easy ride, and Autry doesn’t pull any punches describing the hard existence people faced during that time and place. The characters, both good and evil, grab your imagination as they struggle to overcome hardships and celebrate accomplishments. Written in the tradition of Steinbeck and Dos Passos, Hillbilly Grit is a fast-paced read that will keep you engrossed to the story’s surprising end.
January 12, 2026
Autry paints her family's history as if it were unfolding before her. Set in the American West, we follow men and women trying to survive against difficult conditions, when people thrived or perished by their own hard work and sometimes, pure luck (or lack of it).
Hillbilly Grit hits hard from the first chapter. Her research into the era is impressive. You get a sense of how people lived in those times, to the point where you feel you are living it yourself. This hardboiled historical fiction novel will appeal to fans of Cormac McCarthy or Barbara Kingsolver.
Hillbilly Grit hits hard from the first chapter. Her research into the era is impressive. You get a sense of how people lived in those times, to the point where you feel you are living it yourself. This hardboiled historical fiction novel will appeal to fans of Cormac McCarthy or Barbara Kingsolver.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews