A story that captures the hope, grace, and joy of new love--but also the mistakes, scar tissue, and regret of past love. It's a wonder to behold, a novel capable of such breadth. This is the kind of book that makes me a better human. --Nathan Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Nix and Wellness
From the critically acclaimed author of Shotgun Lovesongs comes an exquisitely written, small-town story about one couple's hard-won second chance at love, forty years after their divorce.
Charlie and Vivian parted ways after just four years of marriage. Too many problems, too many struggles, even though the love didn't quite die. When Charlie returns to Wisconsin forty years later, he's not sure what he'll find. He is sure of one thing -- he must try to reconnect with Vivian to pick up the broken pieces of their past. But forty years is a long time. It's forty years of other relationships, forty years of building new lives, and forty years of long-held regrets, mistakes, and painful secrets.
A brave and triumphant exploration of redemption and sunset triumph, A Forty Year Kiss is a once-in-a-lifetime love story, written with dazzling lyricism and remarkable clarity of spirit, from a celebrated author at the top of his game. It's a literary valentine that promises to be a love story for the ages.
In this moving new novel from celebrated author Nickolas Butler, a Wisconsin family grapples with the power and limitations of faith when one of their own falls under the influence of a radical church
Lyle Hovde is at the onset of his golden years, living a mostly content life in rural Wisconsin with his wife, Peg, daughter, Shiloh, and six-year old grandson, Isaac. After a troubled adolescence and subsequent estrangement from her parents, Shiloh has finally come home. But while Lyle is thrilled to have his whole family reunited, he's also uneasy: in Shiloh's absence, she has become deeply involved with an extremist church, and the devout pastor courting her is convinced Isaac has the spiritual ability to heal the sick.
While reckoning with his own faith--or lack thereof--Lyle soon finds himself torn between his unease about the church and his desire to keep his daughter and grandson in his life. But when the church's radical belief system threatens Isaac's safety, Lyle is forced to make a decision from which the family may not recover.
Set over the course of one year and beautifully evoking the change of seasons, Little Faith is a powerful and deeply affecting intergenerational novel about family and community, the ways in which belief is both formed and shaken, and the lengths we go to protect our own.
Nickolas Butler's bestselling Shotgun Lovesongs (Impressively original. --New York Times) is that rare work of fiction that evokes a specific time and place, yet movingly describes the universal human condition. A truly remarkable book that, once read, will never be forgotten.
Welcome to Little Wing.
[A] tender, insightful book... Perfectly paced and leavened with humor, it's a wonderful read. -- People
*SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 WILLIAM SAROYAN INTERNATIONAL PRIZE FOR WRITING*
An epic novel of intertwining friendships and families set in the Northwoods of Wisconsin at a beloved Boy Scout summer camp--from the bestselling author of Shotgun Lovesongs
Camp Chippewa, 1962. Nelson Doughty, age thirteen, social outcast and overachiever, is the Bugler, sounding the reveille proudly each morning. Yet this particular summer marks the beginning of an uncertain and tenuous friendship with a popular boy named Jonathan.
Over the years, Nelson, irrevocably scarred from the Vietnam War, becomes Scoutmaster of Camp Chippewa, while Jonathan marries, divorces, and turns his father's business into a highly profitable company. And when something unthinkable happens at a camp get-together with Nelson as Scoutmaster and Jonathan's teenage grandson and daughter-in-law as campers, the aftermath demonstrates the depths--and the limits--of Nelson's selflessness and bravery.
The Hearts of Men is a sweeping, panoramic novel about the slippery definitions of good and evil, family and fidelity, the challenges and rewards of lifelong friendships, the bounds of morality--and redemption.
Nickolas Butler's debut novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, became an international bestseller and won numerous accolades, including France's Prix Page/America. Now, in Beneath the Bonfire, he demonstrates his talent for portraying a place and its people with such love that you'll find yourself falling for them, too (Josh Weil, author of The Great Glass Sea).
Young couples gather to participate in an annual chainsaw party, cutting down trees for firewood in anticipation of the winter. A group of men spend a weekend hunting for mushrooms in the wilderness where they grew up and where some still find themselves trapped. An aging environmentalist takes out his frustration and anger on a singular, unsuspecting target. One woman helps another get revenge against a man whose crime extends far beyond him to an entire community. Together, the ten stories in this dazzling, surprising collection evoke a landscape that will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has traveled the back roads and blue highways of America, and they completely capture the memorable characters who call it home.A story that captures the hope, grace, and joy of new love--but also the mistakes, scar tissue, and regret of past love. It's a wonder to behold, a novel capable of such breadth. This is the kind of book that makes me a better human. --Nathan Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Nix and Wellness
From the critically acclaimed author of Shotgun Lovesongs comes an exquisitely written, small-town story about one couple's hard-won second chance at love, forty years after their divorce, now in trade paperback.
Charlie and Vivian parted ways after just four years of marriage. Too many problems, too many struggles, even though the love didn't quite die. When Charlie returns to Wisconsin forty years later, he's not sure what he'll find. He is sure of one thing -- he must try to reconnect with Vivian to pick up the broken pieces of their past. But forty years is a long time. It's forty years of other relationships, forty years of building new lives, and forty years of long-held regrets, mistakes, and painful secrets.
A brave and triumphant exploration of redemption and sunset triumph, A Forty Year Kiss is a once-in-a-lifetime love story, written with dazzling lyricism and remarkable clarity of spirit, from a celebrated author at the top of his game. It's a literary valentine that promises to be a love story for the ages.