Description

The award-winning author of The End of Vandalism pens "a gorgeous, inexplicably sad and funny novel about screwups trying to do better" (Salon).

In this mesmerizing novel, Tom Drury once again journeys to the quiet Midwest to spend an action-packed October weekend in the lives of a precarious family whose members all want something without knowing how to get it: for Charles, an heirloom shotgun; for his wife, Joan, the imaginative life she once knew; for their young son, Micah, a knowledge of the scope and reliability of his world, aided by prowling the empty town at night; and for Joan's daughter, Lyris, a stable foot from which to begin to grow up.

Sometimes together, sometimes crucially apart, father, mother, son, and daughter move through a series of vivid encounters that demonstrate how even the most provisional family can endure in its own particular way.

"A beguiling novel . . . perceptive and captivating."--The New York Times

"Entrancing."--The Guardian

"Startling and utterly original."--Newsday

"Drury is an absolutely delightful writer who has carved out a world of his own in American fiction, one that is odd, revealing, and yet filled with love."--Library Journal

"The trick and true pleasure here are in the utterly ordinary context these extraordinary events occur in. Drury never misses a beat--the quiet moments dazzle as much the louder ones."--Kirkus Reviews