Desert Boys

Winner of the Stonewall Book Award/Barbara Gittings Literature AwardFinalist for the Binghamton University’s John Gardner Fiction Book AwardFinalist for the Saroyan Prize for Fiction Longlisted for the Chautauqua PrizeHilarious Devious Original and Unforgettable.―Karen Russell 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 life 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 by Chris McCormick 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.