The Ruin Season by Kristopher Triana

Jake Leonard has more than his share of trouble. He's close to forty now and still suffers from bipolar disorder and the painful memories of the psychotic episodes that derailed his life and sent him behind bars as a youth. He lives in the rural south where he spends his days breaking horses and his nights training dogs in solitude. His nineteen-year-old girlfriend, Nikki, is the daughter of the sheriff, and she's just getting worse with drugs, alcohol and satanic metal, eventually leading into heroin and low-budget porn. When Jake reconnects with his ex-wife, things get even more complicated, and the limits of love and sanity get pushed to the breaking point. The Ruin Season is a haunting tale of a mentally ill man struggling in a violent and heartless world. It is a story of unrequited love, rage, and bloody revenge. It moves forward in the style of gritty southern gothic novels, in the tradition of Larry Brown, Harry Crews, Daniel Woodrell, Cormac McCarthy, and Flannery O'Conner. It shows both the tender and horrible sides of insanity as well as the seedy underbelly of the American, backwoods suburbs.