Jonis Agee

Agee has always been a fascinating study, as well as refreshingly free of literary conceits and pretension. She has a distinctly Midwestern, blue-collar sensibility, and is fearless (or perhaps heedless) when it comes to her subjects; this is a woman, after all, who somehow managed to publish a collection of stories built around automobile racing, and that topic provides plenty of apt metaphors for Agee’s fiction: breakneck speed, unexpected twists and turns, and spectacular flameouts. Her latest novel is a gothic family saga set in Missouri’s Bootheel region, and features, among other plotlines and hard-boiled entanglements, river piracy. 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis; 612-822-4611; www.magersandquinn.com