American Rust

Author Philipp Meyer presents his astounding debut American Rust—a powerful, morally complex novel of two friends struggling to face an uncertain future in a crumbling western Pennsylvania steel town.

Twenty-year-old Isaac feels trapped by circumstance after his mother’s suicide and his genius older sister’s departure to Yale. His best and only friend Poe is a high school football hero who made some bad choices and is going nowhere fast.

When Isaac resolves to leave town for good, Poe walks with him for a while down the tracks before a sudden downpour forces them to seek refuge in a vacant factory. In that dark place, a series of harrowing events is set in motion, beginning with an act of self-defense that will change their lives forever.

Favorably compared to Pete Dexter, Russell Banks, and John Steinbeck, Meyer vividly evokes the plight of one of America’s abandoned industrial heartlands—a majestic natural landscape pockmarked by the rusting remains of another time and inhabited by people whose futures have long since been sold out.