Reviews

"The mayors winked. The cops winked. The preachers winked, or at least averted their gaze. Winking was how [Hot Springs,] a Bible Belt town of 28,000 (circa 1960) attracted upward of five million visitors per year and why, as Hill writes, on any given Saturday night, there may have been 'no more exhilarating place to be in the entire country' . . . Hazel’s story, as The Vapors progresses, provides the emotional ballast, the counterweight to all the good-timey glitz, the darkness behind the neon signs. It gives the book its heft, and its warmth . . . Complex, turbulent, as haunting as a pedal steel solo . . . [it] is the wellspring of David Hill’s achievement." ― NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW

“A juicy tale . . . [David Hill] offers up a huge cast of colorful, mostly sleazy characters, but he focuses on three key players . . . Weaving their stories in and out . . . Hill unfolds an engrossing history of corruption at the highest levels . . . Captivating.”
— KIRKUS REVIEWS

“[David Hill’s] fantastic debut blends true crime and Southern history to chronicle the transformation of Hot Springs, Arkansas, from a spa town into a hotbed of horse racing, prostitution, and illegal gambling . . . Hill tracks this history through the lives of three central figures: Owney Madden, Dane Harris, and Hazel Hill (the author’s grandmother) . . . Expertly interweaving family memoir, Arkansas politics, and Mafia lore, Hill packs the story full of colorful characters and hair-raising events. This novelistic history hits the jackpot.”
— PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY (starred review)

“The history is fascinating, but what makes The Vapors a compelling—and ultimately heartwrenching—book is the author’s account of his own family, who lived in Hot Springs during the casino heyday . . . Hill tells the hard truth of [their] life with compassion and context.”

— BOOKPAGE

“If history had turned out a little differently, the popular expression might be, “What happens in Hot Springs, stays in Hot Springs.” . . . [The Vapors] delivers scrupulous research of the city’s high-stakes reversals of fortune while also digging into Hill’s own roots . . . Even as the book tracks nearly a century of corruption in Hot Springs, it also cultivates nostalgia for the kind of old-fashioned, illicit pleasures the city promised its visitors.”

— ATLANTA JOURNAL - CONSTITUTION