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Set in rural Iowa, this "breathtaking . . . remarkable achievement" of a debut novel by the author of Pacific is "at once funny, sad, and touching" (New York Newsday).
A New York Magazine and Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
With extensive excerpts appearing in The New Yorker before its release, Tom Drury's groundbreaking debut, The End of Vandalism, drew widespread acclaim and comparison to the works of Sherwood Anderson and William Faulkner.
With his fictional Grouse County, Tom Drury conjures a Midwest that is at once familiar and amusingly eccentric—where a thief vacuums the church before stealing the chalice, a lonely woman paints her toenails in a drafty farmhouse, and a sleepless man watches his restless bride scatter their bills beneath the stars.
When Sheriff Dan Norman arrests Tiny Darling for vandalizing an anti–vandalism dance, he goes on to marry the culprit's ex-wife Louise. But while Tiny loses Louise, Louise loses her sense of self—and all three find themselves in a love triangle that sets them on an epic journey.
"A truly great writer."—Esquire
"Grouse County is unabashedly American, a setting both nostalgic and wittily contemporary."—The Boston Globe
Praise for The End of Vandalism:
“Remarkable . . . Simply stuns you with the elegance and beauty of its writing.”—Entertainment Weekly
“Rich and readable . . . [Drury] possesses his made-up world with the same authority Sherwood Anderson brought to Winesburg, Ohio, and Faulkner to Yoknapatawpha County.”—USA Today
“Remarkably funny . . . astonishingly vivid.”—Los Angeles Times
“Absolutely irresistible.”—The Hartford Courant
“Tom Drury’s prose is quietly heartbreaking, laugh-out-loud funny, and always, absolutely convincing.”—Jayne Anne Phillips
“So amiably dense with anecdote and observation, the reader is bounced along by its energy.”—The Boston Globe
“Miraculous . . . reads like life itself.”—Men’s Journal
Tom Drury is the author of Pacific, longlisted for the National Book Award; The End of Vandalism; Hunts in Dreams; The Driftless Area; and The Black Brook. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s, and the Mississippi Review. Drury has been a Guggenheim Fellow and was named one of Granta’s “Best Young American Novelists.” He lives in Iowa.