You Can See More From Up Here

The December, 2019, pick of The Nervous Breakdown Book Club 

"A poignantly told story of ruminative remembrance"— Kirkus Reviews

"I was captured from the first sentence...superbly written" — Midwest Book Review 


"A sensitive, clear-eyed, unsentimental story"— Christopher Castellani, author of Leading Men


"Self-assured prose, raw honesty and unwavering momentum" — Danny Rubin, screenwriter of Groundhog Day


In 2004, when middle-aged Walker Maguire is called to the deathbed of his estranged father, his thoughts return to 1974. He'd worked that summer at the auto factory where his dad, an unhappily retired Air Force colonel, was employed as plant physician. Witness to a bloody fight falsely blamed on a Mexican immigrant, Walker kept quiet, fearing his white co-workers and tyrannical father. Lies snowball into betrayals, leading to a life-long rift between father and son that can only be mended by the past coming back to life and revealing its long-held secrets. You Can See More From Up Here is a coming-of-age tale about the illusion of privilege and the power of the past to inform and possibly heal the present.

Praise for You Can See More From Up Here

In this novel, author Guerin beautifully captures the powerful contradictions of the relationship between father and son, which combines elements of friendship and antagonism. The prose is confident and confessional throughout…Like the journalist he is, Walker clamors for the truth, whether it's consoling or not. A poignantly told story of ruminative remembrance.— Kirkus Reviews

Alternating between a summer [in 1974] and winter thirty years later, as Walker sits at his dying father's bedside, the book examines the dichotomy of a strict father and his conscientious son, both products of their respective times…Mark Guerin's debut maneuvers through heartbreak with grace, navigating family expectations, a community's pervasive racism, and how peoples' actions shape others' opinions. — Forward Reviews