Firework

Called'an explosive road novel'by Vanity Fair, Eugene Marten is the rightful successor to Cormac McCarthy. Jelonnek, blue-collar Midwesterner is trapped in a life he is almost sure he wants to escape. He makes the first real choice of his life when a simple errand to a convenience store escalates into a terrifying encounter. He finds himself on a cross-country odyssey with a woman he barely knows and her young daughter, in search of escape and a second act. They find shelter and a safe distance at the edge of country and community, only to be besieged by threats from outside and, finally, from within. A descent into paranoia, nascent violence and sexuality ensues, culminating in a one-man Armageddon and an aftermath as hopeful as it is horrifying--Cover p. [4] Praise for Eugene Marten's Waste : "When a poet pal had put a copy of Waste into my hands, I right away went nuts. . . . Here, said I, in wild proclamation, is one for history and a half."— Gordon Lish Firework is the story of a man who, though ill-equipped to help himself, attempts to help someone else, and the beautifully rendered, perhaps necessary catastrophe that results. Unequaled in intensity and often blackly humorous, it is also an exhilarating expression of the all-too-human impulse to become more than what we seem to be. Eugene Marten is the author of In the Blind and Waste .