Based on Bruce Springsteen’s 1982 album Nebraska, Tennessee Jones uses interlinked short stories to explore the changing face of America over the two decades since it’s release. From the closing of the auto plants to the forgotten faces of the queer Midwest, the forces behind American’s changing lives find expression in Jones’ diverse characters. A testament to how rock music and literature influence and borrow from one another, Deliver me from Nowhere is as influenced by Flannery O’Connor and John Steinbeck as it is by Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash, Patti Smith, and the themes found in traditional gospel hymns. From the portrait of a man laid off an auto plant—who fantasizes about eating the car he helped build—to the twelve year old boy who watches his father’s red-river baptism and understands the connection between work and death, Jones unforgettable people often question whether redemption is possible or even desirable. In doing so they extract—sometimes! to their own awe and bereavement—the thread of religion that runs through the American experience of rock and roll.