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A Novel
by Ryan Burruss
An electrifying new novel for readers of Joe Hill and Stephen King.
Beneath a hopeful new suburb carved from the echoes of war, an old hunger stirs, awakened by an itinerant stranger whose gifts reveal what the town has tried to bury: The past is not done feeding.
It's 1952, and a dark force gathers in the nearly completed subdivision of Brookshire, Maryland, a place meant to promise safety and security for those ready to establish roots after the chaos and sacrifice of World War II. This maleficent thrum feeds off the trauma and quiet rage dwelling in those veterans who have returned home to claim their piece of the American Dream--the quarter-acre lot, the pretty wife, the docile children.
That promise begins to waver when a cryptic bookbinder arrives in town, leaving handmade books around town in trees and mailboxes that speak to the secrets tucked behind storm doors and chain-link fences. His bond with an equally misunderstood young girl reveals further mysteries tying this stranger's own history to Brookshire's fate, as a makeshift tribe readies for battle against the evil growing in their town.
A debut novel about secrets, community, and the insatiable amoral emptiness that is the true embodiment of war, American Crow tells a thrilling, page-turning story set against the darkest echoes of humanity.
"An ambitious and mysterious novel about love, loss, and community, Ryan Burruss's American Crow digs beneath the troubled surface of a town haunted by the dark spectres of violence and war. Burruss is a tremendous talent—his prose sings and dances, throws off sparks, flashes out bolts of bright lightning. He skillfully digs into his many characters' hearts and minds with delicacy, insight, and a deep wellspring of empathy. What a terrific debut!" —Dino Enrique Piacentini, author of Invasion of the Daffodils
"From its shocking prologue to its inexorable conclusion, American Crow examines an America of veterans and war widows haunted by a violent past bleeding through the present. It is a post-war world in which each character is a riddle seeking to be solved, even if the solution is sometimes savage." —John Biguenet, author of Oyster and The Torturer's Apprentice
This information about American Crow 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.
Ryan Burruss has enjoyed fiction bylines in Prairie Schooner, The Carolina Quarterly, Whiskey Island Magazine, and New Orleans Review, among many others. A native of the East Coast, Ryan now resides on Colorado's Front Range. He is a participating member of the Lighthouse Writers Workshop.
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