Author(s): Callan Wink

Novel

From an assured new voice in American fiction, a magnificent and moving first novel about a boy coming of age in the American heartland.

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.

Review: 'Wink has a precise, clear prose style...The landscape is a character in itself - well-known, but changeable... Wink skilfully imbues his writing with a subtle sense of foreboding that never leaves... In this tightly controlled yet highly unpredictable novel we discover what it is like to come of age in a part of America that is always changing, always the same' - Guardian

'Callan Wink [...] reconfigures the landscape of the American West' - Irish Times

Author Biography: Callan Wink was born in Michigan in 1984 and now lives in Livingston Montana, where he is a fly-fishing guide on the Yellowstone River. He has been awarded fellowships by the National Endowment for the Arts and Stanford University, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow. His stories and essays appear widely, including in The New Yorker, Granta, Zoetrope, Playboy, Men's Journal and The Best American Short Stories Anthology. His first book, Dog Run Moon, was shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize and received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention.