Synopses & Reviews
The year is 1968. The world is changing, and sixteen-year-old Jon Mosher is determined to change with it. Racked by guilt over his older brother's childhood death and stuck in the dead-end town of Brewster, New York, he turns his rage into victories running track. Meanwhile, Ray Cappicciano, a rebel as gifted with his fists as Jon is with his feet, is trying to take care of his baby brother while staying out of the way of his abusive, ex-cop father. When Jon and Ray form a tight friendship, they find in each other everything they lack at home, but it's not until Ray falls in love with beautiful, headstrong Karen Dorsey that the three friends begin to dream of breaking away from Brewster for good. Freedom, however, has its price. As forces beyond their control begin to bear down on them, Jon sets off on the race of his life--a race to redeem his past and save them all.
Review
"[I]ntense and elegiac novel... Slouka's storytelling is sure and patient, deceptively steady and devastatingly agile." New York Times Book Review
Review
"Slouka's laconic dialogue resonates with regional authenticity, his late-1960's pop culture references ring true, and the stripped down prose style in his masterful coming-of-age novel recalls the likes of Tobias Wolff and Raymond Carver." Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
Review
"Reading is like entering the very heart of a Bruce Springsteen song--all grace, all depth, all sinew. Slouka--one of the great unsung writers of our time--has written a magnificent novel that woke my tired heart." Colum McCann, National Book Award-winning author of Let the Great World Spin
Review
"Terrific.... [W]here Slouka distinguishes himself as an author of particular sensitivity and significance is in how accurately and memorably he is able to conjure up a particular mood that has no doubt been felt in every era, not just the late '60s and early '70s. There is a timeless sense of yearning here." Adam Langer
Review
"The dark undertow of Slouka's prose makes instantly mesmerizing, a novel that whirls the reader into small-town, late 1960s America with mastery, originality, and heart." Boston Globe
Review
"Evocative... gorgeously written... both spare and highly dramatic. Slouka has an exceptional ear for the way kids talk, an eye for the detail of a not-so-recent past .... In , Slouka creates a messy miniature. It's a tight, little world where ...the subjects--human frailty, friendship, yearning, heart and love--don't make for easy poses. And you can't take your eyes from it." Jennifer Egan, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
Review
"If ecstasy was Nabokov's keynote, Slouka's is passion. I can think of no one else who writes with such brazen fervor, with so much heart poured into every line. He is the perfect writer for a Passion Play about youth: youth's ardor, youth's anguish, youth's nakedness. is that novel, and it blazes." John Barron Chicago Tribune
Review
"This beautifully written coming-of-age story sings with wisdom and heart. Slouka's characters struggle to survive against a backdrop of remembered pain, routine violence and the threat of being drafted to Vietnam, fighting to retain a friendship that may just be able to save them." Brian Hall, author of Fall of Frost
Review
"[A] novel of stark and brutal truths...[] culminates in a scene of such visceral power and narrative force that this reader was left breathless. But perhaps Slouka's greatest accomplishment is his ability to blend his own authorial voice with the dialogue of his characters. It's as if the conversations that pass between Jon and Ray and Karen - about music, their plans for the future, their love and devotion to each other--are the lyrics to Slouka's melody. And what a beautiful and redemptive song it is." Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of Once Upon a River
Review
"What Slouka also draws, with unerring accuracy, is the primacy of friendship and loyalty among teens who feel they are powerless. Slouka gives them a voice here, one filled with equal parts humor and pain." Peter Geye Minneapolis Star Tribune
Review
"Despite delving bravely into despairingly dark subject matter, [Brewster] is still somehow infused with hope and light, achieving a sort of literary chiaroscuro.... could become the latest addition to the American canon of coming-of-age stories, enchanting readers with its soulful story of love, loss and the vagaries of the teenage heart." Booklist, Starred Review
Review
" is subtly wrought and wholly moving, capturing with beautiful desperation the sense of personal insecurity overshadowed by an era of unwieldy international concerns." Karen Ann Cullotta BookPage
Review
"One to devour... fans of Richard Russo novels or Chad Herbach's should love this novel." The Rumpus
Review
"A masterpiece of winter sorrow... Slouka's real triumph here is capturing the amber of grief, the way love and time have crystallized these memories into something just as gorgeous as it is devastating." The Columbus Dispatch
Synopsis
Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War era, a powerful coming-of-age story about an unforgettable friendship between two teenage boys on the brink of manhood and their hopes for escape from a dead-end town will have strong crossover appeal for young adult and adult audiences.
Synopsis
A 2013 Editors' Choice: Best Adult Books for Young Adults A powerful story about an unforgettable friendship between two teenage boys and their hopes for escape from a dead-end town.
About the Author
Mark Slouka is the author of four previous works of fiction including Lost Lake, a New York Times Notable Book, and The Visible World, a finalist for the British Book Award. His 2011 essay collection, "Essays from the Nick of Time," was the winner of the PEN/Diamonstein-Speilvogel Award. A contributing editor at Harper's, Slouka's work has also appeared in Best American Short Stories, Best American Essays, and the PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. He lives in Brewster, New York.