From Dusty Slay, the Southern stand-up comedian and Nashville favorite behind Netflix’s Wet Heat and Workin’ Man specials, comes a collection of personal essays featuring his signature storytelling rooted in finding the hilarity in everyday life.

Dusty Slay has lived a lot of lives. At eighteen years old, he dropped out of community college. At nineteen, his plans to join the army were foiled by an arrest. By twenty-one he moved from his hometown of Opelika, Alabama, to Charleston, South Carolina.

On the coast, Slay worked as a waiter and pesticide salesman for over a decade while moonlighting as an obscure, often drunk, open mic comedian. It wasn’t until he quit drinking in 2012 that he started to take comedy and his unique talent for telling jokes seriously.

These personal essays chronicle the life he’s led—from growing up in a trailer park to performing at the Grand Ole Opry—with his signature Southern humor and wit, revealing how to find light, laughter, and gratitude in everyday moments, even through life’s challenges.