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Register HERE

Pre-registering helps us order enough books for our guests and helps us set up the room for safety and comfort. We will allow pre-registrants to be seated first. No one will be turned away, but please note that seating is limited. Please contact the store ahead of time if you need assistance with mobility or other concerns - we are happy to help!

Frank Bill is back with a gritty, wrenching novel from deep inside the traumas of a broken American heartland.

Miles is a Vietnam vet who’s worried he’s going to lose his job and his tenuous grasp on a stable life because of a fight he had with a coworker over some steroids. His PTSD and struggles to control his steroid-fueled violent tendencies complicate life with his girlfriend, Shelby, a stripper who only occasionally seems to have the proverbial heart of gold. She certainly seems to possess more kindness and generosity than her brother, Wylie, who’s currently on the run after being implicated in the deaths of two local oxycodone dealers and has their relatives on his tail. When Wylie kidnaps his sister and holes up in Miles's country lair, it is, frankly, threatening to become a bit too much for steroid-addled Miles to handle.

Frank Bill’s world is as wild and rollicking as ever, punctuated with uproarious event after uproarious event. But in Back to the Dirt, he goes deeper than wall-to-wall brawl—with Miles, he takes us back to the experiences overseas that stripped the innocence and optimism from the heartland dream; with Shelby, he shows us that you didn’t have to travel to Vietnam to see real darkness. But still, even in this benighted state, there’s the dirt to come back to. And maybe, just maybe, Bill shows, that can be enough.

Frank Bill is the author of the novel Donnybrook and the story collection Crimes in Southern Indiana, one of GQ's favorite books of 2011 and a Daily Beast best debut of 2011. He lives and writes in Southern Indiana.

Kyle Minor is the author of Praying Drunk, winner of the 2015 Story Prize Spotlight award. His stories and essays appear in Best American Mystery Stories, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Esquire, The Atlantic, Salon, Iowa Review, Missouri Review, Story, and the New York Times Book Review. His essay collection, How to Disappear and Why, will be published in 2024 by Sarabande Books.

You can get the book on the registration page, but it’s cheaper if you link below because we don’t pay extra service fees. Whatever is more convenient for you, we love to get you your books!

Mobility device access info:

While our store has ramp access to the right of the main entrance, the event space is more easily accessed by entering at Bayly Avenue. Please call the store when you arrive and we will be happy to welcome you via this entrance. This door is next to a loading zone for easy car access, and our parking lot reserved ADA spots are also close to this entrance.