Reap

Like a cross between Denis Johnson's Already Dead and David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Reap draws us into the hot, still air of a summer backwoods at whose fringes lurk danger and epiphany. Jessup Burke, a lonely, naive sixteen-year old, has grown up without a father in a jobless, indifferent logging town. Out of high school a year early, he now bikes through the woods with his fishing gear, daydreaming of his sweetheart and their secret "home" in an abandoned farmhouse. When Reg, an embittered, paranoid recluse fresh out of jail for growing marijuana, encounters Jessup hitchhiking, he is at first drawn to the boy's easily manipulated naivete, but the two soon become irreversibly bound. As Jessup unknowingly participates in Reg's perilous, criminal behavior, he also endangers himself when his relationship with Marigold, Reg's younger, married sister, goes beyond friendship. Jessup's rude awakening into adulthood is rendered in sure and supple prose in this dramatic, action-packed novel. "Jessup Burke, a lonely, naive sixteen-year-old, has grown up without a father in an indifferent, economically deprived logging town. Out of high school a year early, he now bikes the back roads and roams the woods with his fishing gear, daydreaming of his sweetheart and their secret "home" in an abandoned farmhouse.". "When twenty-nine-year-old Reg Cumber, an embittered, paranoid recluse - fresh out of jail for growing marijuana - encounters Jessup hitchhiking, he is drawn to the boy's naivete, and the two soon become irreversibly bound. Jessup befriends Marigold, Reg's younger sister, whose wayward husband, Hess, is descending into a dangerous and potentially violent life of emotional solitude. As Jessup unknowingly participates in Reg's perilous behavior, he also endangers himself when his relationship with Marigold hazards beyond friendship."--BOOK JACKET. A bold debut novel weaves a coming-of-age story into the gritty lives and desolate beauty of Vermont's northeast kingdom