EBOOK
About
Nickolas Butler's debut novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, has become 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.
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.
Related Subjects
Reviews
"The stories in Beneath the Bonfire pack a sincere, emotional punch. Nickolas Butler's territory might be the Midwest (which warms this particular reader's heart), but the losses--and hard-won gains--are universal. This writer is the real deal."
Peter Orner, author of Last Car over the Sagamore Bridge
"I love these stories: they're quiet, careful. As glaciated as their own vistas. Butler's is a deft hand, who as in the title story, takes us beneath the ice and forces us to confront the deepest extents of our friendships, our marriages, our family. Without a doubt, Beneath the Bonfire is a diamond of a collection, shaped and hardened through the profound geologic pressures of love and pain."
Bill Cheng, author of Southern Cross the Dog
"Beneath the Bonfire burns with nostalgia for those youthful years when we know too little and surrenders to the later years when we've learned too much. With honesty and tenderness, Butler portrays people at crossroads, as hardened and hopeful as the landscape they can't leave behind."
Diane Cook, author of Man V. Nature