Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published May 2016
240 pages
Genre: Short Stories
Publication Information
A vivid and assured work of fiction from a major new voice following the life of a young man growing up, leaving home, and coming back again, marked by the stark beauty of California's Mojave desert and the various fates of those who leave and those who stay behind.
This series of powerful, intertwining stories illuminates Daley Kushner's world - the family, friends and community that have both formed and constrained him, and his new lief in San Francisco. Back home, the desert preys on those who cannot conform: an alfalfa farmer on the outskirts of town; two young girls whose curiosity leads to danger; a black politician who once served as his school's confederate mascot; Daley's mother, an immigrant from Armenia; and Daley himself, introspective and queer. Meanwhile, in another desert on the other side of the world, war threatens to fracture Daley's most meaningful - and most fraught - connection to home, his friendship with Robert Karinger.
A luminous debut, Desert Boys traces the development of towns into cities, of boys into men, and the haunting effects produced when the two transformations overlap. Both a bildungsroman and a portrait of a changing place, the book mines the terrain between the desire to escape and the hunger to belong.
"Starred Review. Stunningly good ... When we leave Antelope Valley we immediately want to go back, so achingly good are these beautifully conceived stories." - Kirkus
"Bold and intoxicating, McCormick's stories redefine manhood in the face of war, longing, and escape." - Booklist
"Engaging...The stories in which Daley, known in the book as Kush, interacts with his friends have a shaggy, circuitous, random feeling - a combination of edge and aimlessness that believably evokes adolescent anomie and angst...A lovely, quiet book by a promising new voice." - Publishers Weekly
"Desert Boys is hilarious, devious, original, and unforgettable; Chris McCormick writes with a joyful swerve and swagger that is all his own." - Karen Russell, New York Times bestselling author of Vampires in the Lemon Grove
"These linked stories assemble into a kind of compound eye through which we glimpse an oft-forgotten corner of California and, most superbly, a fresh take on masculine Americana." - Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Battleborn and Gold Fame Citrus
"In the hands of this young master of purified prose, ambition, love, and the restlessness of boyhood are trapped as if in a crystal vial. No reader will be able to turn away."- Chigozie Obioma, author of The Fishermen
"Chris McCormick's book is a gift from the new West ... a deeply moving journey through the natural and emotional landscapes of the American present." - Héctor Tobar, New York Times bestselling author of Deep Down Dark and The Barbarian Nurseries
"Wise and vulnerable by turns, this is a quietly stunning debut." - Peter Ho Davies, author of The Welsh Girl
This information about Desert Boys was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Chris McCormick was raised in the Antelope Valley. He earned his B.A. at the University of California, Berkeley, and his M.F.A. at the University of Michigan, where he was the recipient of two Hopwood Awards. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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