American Rust: A Novel

Isaac English lives in a economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town and longs to escape. Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother's suicide and his sister's departure to Yale, he finally decides to leave for good. He is accompanied by his best friend Billy Poe, a former high school football star with a temperamental nature. Their departure is interrupted when they become caught up in a terrible act of violence that permanently alters their lives. The novel explores the lost American dream, and the acts of friendship, loyalty, and love that emerge from its loss. It examines the bleak realities that conflict with the desire for transcendence, and the power of love and friendship to provide redemption. The work evokes the tradition of novels depicting restless lives during economic hardship, offering a dark but lucid vision of the contemporary American heartland at a moment of profound unrest and uncertainty.