August
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- 15,99 €
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- 15,99 €
Publisher Description
August is an average twelve year old - he likes dogs and fishing, and doesn't even mind early morning chores on his family's farm. When his parents' marriage falls apart and he has to start over in a new town, he tries hard to be an average teen - playing football and doing his homework - but he struggles to form friendships, and when a shocking act of violence pushes him off course once more, he flees to rural Montana. There, as he throws himself into work on a ranch, he comes to learn that even the smallest of communities have secrets and even the most broken of families have a bond.
Beautifully written and unfolding against an epic American landscape, August is a compelling, authentic and poignant story of the joys and traumas that irrevocably shape us all.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wink's accomplished debut novel (after the collection Dog Run Moon) explores the nuances of present-day agricultural life. August grows up on the family dairy farm in Michigan with his divorced parents, shuttling between the "old house" where his mother, Bonnie, lives, and the "new house" built by his father, Dar, with Bonnie's inheritance. After Dar shacks up with a woman just out of high school, Bonnie moves with August to Bozeman, Mont., where August attends high school and has his heart broken after sleeping with an older woman. He spends summers working for his father in Michigan, and after graduating, August defers college ("something people do to put off actually doing something") for a position on a Montana cattle ranch. Wink takes an assured, meandering approach to narrating August's life, as August creeps toward adulthood through a series of minor adventures, such as mending fences, drinking at the local watering hole, and learning how to dance. Wink brilliantly captures the stultifying effects of small-town life and the tension between free-spirited August and those stuck in the Montana "suckhole," concluding with a stunning, indelible image from August's rearview mirror. Like a current Jim Harrison, Wink makes irresistable drama out of an individual's search for identity in landscapes that are by turns romantic and limiting.
