Pacific

"A truly great writer" returns to the Midwest characters and setting of his landmark debut novel, The End of Vandalism (Esquire).

When fourteen-year-old Micah Darling travels to Los Angeles to reunite with the mother who abandoned him seven years ago, he finds himself out of his league in a land of magical freedom. He does new drugs with new people, falls in love with an enchanting but troubled equestrienne named Charlotte, and gets thrown out of school over the activities of a club called the New Luddites.

Back in the Midwest, an ethereal young woman comes to Stone City on a mission that will unsettle the lives of everyone she meets including Micah's half-sister, Lyris, who still fights fears of abandonment after a childhood in foster care, and his father, Tiny, a petty thief. An investigation into the stranger's identity uncovers a darkly disturbed life, as parallel narratives of the comic and tragic, the mysterious and everyday, unfold in both the country and the city.

"Pacific is a terrific book, and a strange one, as strange as the world and the great literature that helps us make our way through it."--The New York Times Book Review

"On the surface, Pacific is a disarmingly plain tale about people managing loss. But look closer, and you'll see it's as deep as the ocean it's named after."--San Francisco Chronicle

"If The End of Vandalism provided a world for readers to slow down and catch their breath, Pacific is determined to knock it out of them."--New York Observer

Tom Drury is the author of five previous novels, including Pacific, long-listed for the National Book Award, and The End of Vandalism, named one of the best books of the past 45 years by GQ Magazine in 2002. His short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper's, and A Public Space, and he has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the American Academy in Berlin, and MacDowell. He lives in Iowa City.