“A bold, absorbing novel” (The New York Times Book Review) exploring the desperate dreams and friendship of two men who unwittingly commit a murder in a dying American town.
Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother commits suicide and his sister escapes to Yale, Isaac English longs for a future beyond his hometown–a dying Pennsylvania steel town. But when he finally sets out to leave for good, accompanied by his temperamental best friend, Billy Poe, a former high school football star whose limited prospects are continually narrowing, their dreams are cut short when they become caught up in a terrible act of violence that changes their lives forever.