As of 2023, Smith has published seven novels: The Hands of Strangers (2011), Rivers (2013), Desperation Road (2017), The Fighter (2018), Blackwood (2020), Nick (2021), and Salvage This World (2023).
[6] It is a novella set in Paris and focuses on Jon and Estelle, whose nine-year-old daughter Jennifer is kidnapped during a class field trip at the Musée d'Orsay.
[7] In its starred review, Publishers Weekly wrote, "Smith captures the essence of the helpless, making more of an impact than most novels three times its size.
[9] Rivers is set in post-Hurricane Katrina Mississippi in the distant future as a series of violent storms devastate the state's southern Gulf Coast.
"[10] In her review for The Washington Post, novelist Mary Doria Russell praised Smith's realistic character development and his "honed prose" for building tension.
[24] The Fighter was adapted into a film entitled Rumble Through the Dark (2023), directed by brothers Parker and Graham Phillips and produced by Cassian Elwes.
"[32] In his review for The New York Times, Ben Fountain called it an "exemplary novel" with a "classic American sound" and praised Smith's unique rendering of Nick Carraway.
[34] Publishers Weekly praised the "striking imagery" of the war chapters, but felt the novel ultimately did not provide any deeper understand of Nick Carraway.
[33] The Los Angeles Times agreed, criticizing the novel as devolving into a melodrama and reprocessing Nick Carraway rather than clarifying his character.
[35] Ron Charles of The Washington Post felt the novel failed to expand on the original story, and criticized its second half for withdrawing Nick's perspective too far and leaving readers with "noir caricatures and their lurid spat.
One of those grifters is Elser, a con woman who leads a traveling tent revival she has dubbed the Temple of Pain and Glory.
In his review for The New York Times, John Brandon said the book portrays a "a Deep South where hospitality feels impossible, from which everyone with means and sense has departed, a society where any vehicle on the road might have a bound (if alive) or bagged (if dead) human as its cargo.