July 2020 First Editions Club Pick

New York, NY: Random House (March 31 2020)

First Edition. Signed on the title page.

New in dust jacket.

A boy coming of age in a part of the country that’s being left behind is at the heart of this dazzling novel—the first by an award-winning author of short stories that evoke the American West.

Callan Wink has been compared to masters like Jim Harrison and Thomas McGuane. His short stories have been published in The New Yorker and have won numerous accolades. Now, his enormous talents are showcased in a debut novel that follows a boy in the middle of the country through those difficult years between childhood and adulthood.

August is an average twelve-year-old. He likes dogs and fishing and doesn’t mind early-morning chores on his family’s Michigan dairy farm. But following a messy divorce, his mother decides that she and August need to start over in a new town. There, he tries to be an average teen—football and homework—but when his role in a shocking act of violence throws him off-course once more, he flees to a ranch in rural Montana, where he learns that even the smallest of communities have dark secrets.

Covering August’s adolescence, from age twelve to nineteen, this gorgeously written novel bears witness to the joys and traumas that irrevocably shape us all. Filled with unforgettable characters and stunning natural landscapes, this book is a moving and provocative look at growing up in the American heartland.

Callan Wink has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His stories and essays appear widely, including in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, Playboy, Men’s Journal and The Best American Short Stories. His first book, Dog Run Moon, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention. In the warm months he lives in Livingston, Montana where he is a fly fishing guide on the Yellowstone River. In the winter he surfs in Santa Cruz, California.