Shotgun Lovesongs: A Novel (37 page)

“
Shotgun Lovesongs
is a welcome new treasure. Nickolas Butler manages to shake off the cynicism of his generation to deliver a beautifully written, heartfelt novel about young men in the Midwest grappling with the slipperiest bits of life. Butler has the gift of making the everyday seem new—from the odd way fame silently separates old friends, to the disheartening foibles of a new marriage. This is a talented, thoughtful writer who throws his characters against the singular Wisconsin backdrop and coaxes them to live and breathe. Read
Shotgun Lovesongs
with caution—these guys will stay with you for a while.” 

—K
ATIE
C
ROUCH
,
N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF
G
IRLS IN
T
RUCKS

“Instead of stringing together superlatives, may I just say that
Shotgun Lovesongs
is as true as an honest day’s work, as serious as a busted heart, as welcoming as a warm home fire burning. In these pages you can hear the lonesome whip-poor-will, see the blood on the tracks, sense the mystery of ‘arboretic truth,’ and witness best friends come together in times of love and betrayal. With
Shotgun Lovesongs,
Nickolas Butler has written a Midwestern masterpiece and has done for the modest splendor of verdant farmlands what Larry McMurtry did for the brutal beauty of small-town Texas.”

—A
MBER
D
ERMONT
,
AUTHOR OF THE
N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
BESTSELLER
T
HE
S
TARBOARD
S
EA
AND
D
AMAGE
C
ONTROL:
S
TORIES

“Nick’s literary focus … explorations of the human quest for meaning and value … is a much-needed addition to contemporary fiction in that it explores beyond the conventional repositories of ‘self’—job security, family bonds, for example—and reintroduces us to the settled world of nature, where we can explore into both new and ancient meanings of the term.”

—J
AMES
A
LAN
M
C
P
HERSON
, P
ULITZER
P
RIZE
–
WINNING AUTHOR OF
E
LBOW
R
OOM

“Nickolas Butler ripped my heart out with rare honesty and good, old-fashioned, unapologetic love. A book that makes you want to call old friends. A writer who makes you feel more human than you thought possible.”

—M
ATTHEW
Q
UICK
,
N
EW
Y
ORK
T
IMES
BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF
T
HE
S
ILVER
L
ININGS
P
LAYBOOK

“In fresh, gorgeously wrought prose, Butler weaves an intricate, irresistible tale of friendships old, new, lost and found, of love and betrayal, of forgiveness, of growing up, and, most of all, of what it means to be ‘home.’ Hooray for this warm, wise, bighearted book.”

—E
MILY
J
EANNE
M
ILLER
,
AUTHOR OF
B
RAND
N
EW
H
UMAN
B
EING

“What a cracking book. Full of heart, full of compassion, full of characters who have you rooting for them from the very first page. Butler’s sense of place is so strong that, reading
Shotgun Lovesongs,
I became a temporary resident of small-town Wisconsin—and once I’d finished it, I wanted to go right back there.”

—S
HELLEY
H
ARRIS
,
AUTHOR OF
J
UBILEE
,
SHORT-LISTED FOR THE
2012 C
OMMONWEALTH
B
OOK
P
RIZE

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nickolas Butler was born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and raised in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He holds degrees from the University of Wisconsin and the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He has worked as a Burger King maintenance man, a hot dog vendor, a telemarketer, an innkeeper (twice), an office manager, an author escort, a meatpacker, a coffee roaster, and a liquor store clerk. His writing has appeared in
Narrative Magazine, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review Online, The Christian Science Monitor,
The Progressive,
and elsewhere
.
He lives in Wisconsin with his wife and their two children.