First published 2012
Tom Harry owns The Medicine Lodge, the main bar in Gros Ventre, Montana. He raises his son Rusty alone after the boy's mother abandoned them years earlier. The two live above the bar and get along well enough until the summer Rusty turns twelve. That's when Proxy shows up, a taxi dancer from Tom's past, bringing her beatnik daughter Francine with her. Proxy claims Francine is Tom's child from their earlier relationship. Francine disrupts everything Rusty thought he knew about his life and his father. While the adults around him get caught up in passion and lies, Rusty tries to make sense of their behavior and figure out what's really going on. As tensions build toward a confrontation, Rusty discovers that growing up means watching his small world expand and learning that the past holds more secrets than he imagined.
Genres: 20th-century, american, adult-fiction, family-drama
Vibes: emotional, intimate, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Gros Ventre, Montana
Period: 20th Century
387 pages · Hardcover · Riverhead Books