The Rented Man

By Tim Bryant

Waymon Sallow is seventy-five, poor, proud, and still working a feed route out of Athens, Texas. He lives alone in a rented shack, drives an old truck held together by habit and hope, and trusts routine more than people. Then one day he gets lost on roads he has known for years.

Tom Wheeler at the feed store makes the call Waymon never would: he brings Waymon's estranged son, Bodie, back from Louisiana. Bodie works nights cleaning a hospital and has built his life around distance-distance from East Texas, distance from his father, distance from the old angers that never really died. But as Waymon's mind begins to slip, distance is no longer an option.

Set among feed lots, back roads, hospital corridors, and one small shack where two men can barely speak without wounding each other, THE RENTED MAN is a powerful East Texas novel about memory, pride, working-class survival, and what remains of love when almost everything else has worn down.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0H61X2BHW
• ISBN13: 9798251999358
• Release Date: June 2026
• Publisher: Independently Published
• Length: 334 Pages
• Weight: 0.99 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"