Product DescriptionThe?debut novel from the New York Times bestselling?author of?The Son???which is now an AMC original TV series
Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town?? American Rust is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation?as well as the acts of friendship?? loyalty?? and love?that arise from its loss. From local bars to trainyards to pris"t is the story of two young men?? bound to the town by family?? responsibility?? inertia?? and the beauty around them?? who dream of a future beyond the factories and abandoned homes.
Left alone to care for his aging father after his mother commits suicide and his sister escapes to Yale?? Isaac English longs for a life beyond his hometown. But when he finally sets out to leave for good?? accompanied by his temperamental best friend?? former high school football star Billy Poe?? they are caught up in a terrible act of violence that changes their lives forever.
Evoking John Steinbeck??s novels of restless lives during the Great Depression?? American Rust takes us into the contemporary American heartland at a moment of profound unrest and uncertainty about the future. It is a dark but lucid vision?? a moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence and the power of love and friendship to redeem us.
Newsweek's list of " Ever"
A Washington Post Top Ten Book of 2009
A New York Times Notable Book of 2009
An Economist Best Book of 2009
A Kansas City Star Top 100 book of 2009
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette's Best Books of 2009
Idaho Statesman's Best Books of 2009
Amazon.com ReviewAmazon Best of the Month?? February 2009: Buell?? Pennsylvania lies in ruins?? a dying--if not already dead--steel town?? where even the lush surrounding country seethes with concealed industrial toxins. When Isaac English and Billy Poe--a pair of high-school friends straight "f Steinbeck--embark on a starry-eyed cross-country escape to California?? a violent encounter with a trio of transients leaves one dead?? prying the lid off a rusted can of failed hope and small-town secrets. American Rust is Philipp Meyer's first novel?? and his taut?? direct prose strikes the perfect tone for this kaleidoscope of fractured dreams?? elevating a book that otherwise might be relentlessly dour to the level of honest and unflinching storytelling. (Interestingly?? Meyer has a fan in Patricia Cornwell?? who name-checked American Rust in her latest novel?? Scarpetta?? even though Meyer's book hadn't been released yet.) --Jon Foro
Amazon Exclusive: Philipp Meyer on American Rust
In the late seventies when I was five my parents moved us to a blue-collar neighborhood in Baltimore. As was the case with most of the old cities of the northeast Baltimore was in the throes of a serious social collapse. Any industry you could name was falling apart--steel ship-building textiles--not to mention the docks and the port. The middle class was evaporating. Even among the neighborhood kids there was a sense that things were getting worse not better.
That neighborhood was called Hampden a place since immortalized in many of John Waterss films. Back then even in Baltimores often shoddy public schools Hampden was not a place you wanted to admit you were from--my brother and I often lied when asked where we lived. There were police cars and ambulances on our street with some frequency men passed out on the sidewalk. My father a graduate student once went outside with his pistol to check on a man whom he thought had been murdered near our house.
Even so there was a strong community and the people who were able did their best to watch out for each other. These were goo