Weesel

A voice-driven debut set over one sweltering Maine summer about a boy on the edge of adulthood—stuck in a dead-end town, unraveling over a father who was already gone long before he went missing.

His name is Weesel. His ma says it’s Brian, but it ain’t. He's nineteen, hasn’t finished high school, and is still hanging around Jamesville—a one-horse Maine town where summer feels endless and nothing much ever happens. Unlike his mother, Weesel doesn't see the point in learning the trades. He doesn't want a plan. He wants to smoke cigarettes in the dooryard, do odd jobs for the nice old lady in town, save up for a cell phone, and maybe get lucky with one of the girls on the neighboring town's soccer team.

Then the new English teacher moves in next door. She has a big, fancy dog and a way of walking that makes Weesel think going back for senior year doesn't sound so bad after all.

Over the course of one sweltering Maine week, Weesel and his friends kick around town—checking out girls, swimming at the quarry, swearing too much, and scoring beer from men who've given up on whatever little they had to begin with. Their fathers hover like ghosts: bankrupt, adulterous, or, in Weesel's case, missing entirely. His mother is stretched thin. His sharp-tongued sister keeps a dark secret. And Weesel, angry and scared and trying hard not to care, starts coming apart at the seams.

A Catcher in the Rye for a new generation in the same vein as We the Animals by Justin Torres and Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, this debut novel is equal parts coarse, funny, and devastating—a coming-of-age story about a boy on the edge of adulthood, circling the road out of town, terrified he might already be exactly who he's going to become.