Lizza Bowen

Micah Nathan’s first novel, Gods of Aberdeen, was a critically acclaimed story of adolescent angst. His follow-up, Losing Graceland, mines similar thematic territory as it follows another central male character, Ben Fish, on a wild and weird road trip where bikers, hookers, dive bars and desolate highways are a large part of the landscape.

Losing Graceland follows recent college grad Fish as he struggles to find his place in the world. The flailing Fish is the classic American slacker. He is college-educated, but all he really wants to do is escape to Amsterdam, where his dream is to smoke pot, dabble in artistic endeavors and hook up with hot European girls. Fish is plenty motivated to get away since his teenage girlfriend has just dumped him, and he is reeling from the tragic death of his father. A newspaper ad offering $10,000 to drive an old man cross-country seems to be the answer to Fish’s prayers.

He is hired by a slick-haired, paunchy, pill-popping senior citizen who resembles a washed-up suburban Elvis Presley. Fish and his companion hit the road in a 1965 Cadillac El Dorado and head south from New York to, predictably, Memphis, Tennessee. The navigator’s ultimate goal is to rescue his granddaughter, a stripper named Nadine, from a man whom she has married due to a gross error in judgment.

Stop-offs at karaoke bars en route reveal that Fish’s employer possesses a well-seasoned, velvety voice and swiveling, albeit creaky, hips. The old man’s penchant for jumpsuits and pomade, as well as his detours to visit backwoods oracles and his affinity for gospel music, line up with everything Fish has ever read about the music legend. Along the way, Fish becomes convinced that he could actually be chauffeuring the King.

You’ll have to read Losing Graceland for yourself to determine whether Fish discovers—as the adage goes—if “Elvis lives.” But whether the story is truth or tabloid, Losing Graceland is a fun, fast read for Presley devotees and coming-of-age fiction fans alike.

Jean Thompson’s poignant The Year We Left Home chronicles life as it unfolds for the Erickson family over a span of 30 years. The book begins in Iowa circa 1973. The novel’s matriarch and patriarch are salt-of-the-earth folks, each of their four children “some gradation of blonde, long-boned Nordic-ness.” Servant-hearted and fiercely loyal to family who abide in the area, Mom and Dad are subtly written into the background as Thompson narrates the passing years.

As the parents gray with age and irrelevancy in the lives of their children, their progeny play more of a central role in the story. Readers become intimately acquainted with Ryan, Blake, Anita and Torrie as they experience all of life’s stages. Thompson’s nuanced prose echoes each of their distinct voices as she explores the most heartbreaking times in all four characters’ lives.

Ryan, endowed with good looks and brains, leaves the nest with aspirations outside the rural Midwestern perimeter. For most of the book, readers reside with him after he’s landed in Chicago. Ryan struggles with an undercurrent of guilt: He has lost connection to his roots since leaving home, and there are moral missteps, marital skirmishes and paternal responsibilities that weigh heavily on him.

Meanwhile Blake, a carpenter, Anita, a housewife, and the youngest, Torrie, who is forever changed after a tragic accident, remain close to their roots. Although they have the luxury of familial support, they only lean on one another in the worst times.

Thompson paints a compelling, realistic picture of four siblings slugging through issues such as alcoholism, infidelity and handicaps in The Year We Left Home. Thompson tackles the stuff of real life, and it’s clear that she has great compassion for her characters. Their gut-wrenching, honest inner monologues and resilience imbue them with humanity. Readers will undoubtedly see slivers of themselves in this flawed family, and while the content in The Year We Left Home may be heavy, it’s not without an occasional glimpse of a silver lining.

Middle-aged, mid-level Manhattan art dealer Peter Harris is desperately seeking promise from every facet of his ordinary life. In the trifecta of work, marriage and family, Peter—the central character in Michael Cunningham’s new novel By Nightfall—is unfulfilled and quietly flailing.

Cunningham’s unfiltered, stream-of-consciousness style of writing, which garnered the Pulitzer Prize for his 1988 release The Hours, captures Peter’s internal struggle. Most of the novel’s drama unfolds in Peter’s head. Readers are privy to his most intimate, and often disconcerting, ruminations.

In his career, Peter longs to find the artist: one whose art is beautiful and inspired, yet who will also spur collectors to open their checkbooks. He is on the cusp of signing such an artist, but only due to the misfortune of his good friend and colleague who, due to illness, has to let the artist go.

Peter’s collapsing marriage, however, is the focus of the plot. His wife Rebecca, editor for an arts publication, is attractive, smart and successful. But his feelings for her are waning. When her younger brother Ethan enters the picture, the real breakage begins.

Known as Mizzy, “the mistake,” Ethan is charming but deceitful. A former drug addict, he comes to crash at Peter and Rebecca’s apartment while attempting to gain some direction in his life. When he tells Peter that a career in the arts could interest him, Peter warily agrees to mentor him. But then Peter learns a secret about Mizzy—and fails to share the news with Rebecca—thus instantly complicating matters and bonding the men to one another.

With strong feelings and physical attraction surfacing for Mizzy, and Mizzy seemingly reciprocating Peter’s affection, Peter is forced to examine the parameters of love and lust. By Nightfall is the deeply felt story of the conflicted Peter, who ultimately discovers what he is willing to sacrifice for happiness.