America's Back Porch

The Story

On America's back porch the most diverse and exotic cultures flourish in wild abandon; but it often takes the scrutiny of an outside observer, with an eye for the bizarre, to bring into relief the hilarious, often unsettling, bounty of strange experiences hiding within the mundane. In America's Back Porch, Daniel Jeffreys takes us on a startling voyage of discovery that brings us face-to-face with an America as it might have been recorded by the camera of Robert Frank. There are teenage vampires in Kentucky, Jesus-worshiping rattlesnake handlers in the Appalachians, a vigilante society in Texas, Alabama chain-gang guards who wrestle bears, cosmetic surgeons giving face-lifts to Hollywood dogs, and bounty killers in Florida. In the tradition of Bill Bryson and P. J. O'Rourke, Jeffreys takes us on a rarely seen tour of the underbelly of our culture, recorded with a sure sense for the telling detail, the colorful, and the grotesque.