{"product_id":"9781625571816","title":"Worth Burning","description":"Author: Mickie Kennedy\u003cbr\u003eISBN: 9781625571816\u003cbr\u003ePublisher: Black Lawrence Press\u003cbr\u003eYear first published: 03 Jun 2026\u003cbr\u003ePages: 80 \u003cbr\u003eFormat: Paperback \/ softback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eA searing portrait of survival,\u003ci\u003eWorth Burning\u003c\/i\u003etraces a boy's journey from a turbulent Southern childhood-marked by parental abuse, death, and hidden queerness-through the AIDS crisis, a marriage of convenience, and finally, towards a rugged self-acceptance haunted by the past.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWorth Burning\u003c\/i\u003ecrackles with the heat of a burn barrel. With a novelist's attention to character and narrative trajectory, Mickie Kennedy glides through four decades beginning with the random hit-and-run that kills the young speaker's father. The mother's mourning curdles, grief becomes addiction, and addiction becomes abuse-emotional, physical, and sexual-as mother and son persist, locked in a monstrously confused togetherness further complicated by the speaker's hidden gayness, in a small Southern town.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Through searing confession and stark image-making, Kennedy excavates the contours of a life that persistently bends, against all odds, toward a ramshackle wholeness. Suffused with efficient, image-rich narrative poems, Kennedy's debut is at once sweeping and intimate, like a love note passed in secret.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Ships in 10 to 15 days","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47920668016798,"sku":"ING-9781625571816","price":27.78,"currency_code":"AUD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0400\/9043\/5742\/files\/9781625571816.jpg?v=1782827498","url":"https:\/\/classicbargains.com.au\/products\/9781625571816","provider":"Classic Bargains Australia","version":"1.0","type":"link"}