Engine Running

<b>Runner Up 2021 Gournay Prize</b><br> <br> <i>Engine Running </i>explores debut author Cade Mason's gradual distancing from home and old selves alongside an increasingly fractured family doing the same. Starting at the beginning of his parents' love and working past its end he combs through memory to piece together a portrait of a family then and now: of a father reeling after a blindsiding divorce; of a mother anxious to move on; of a sister caught in the crossfire; and of a son learning to embrace his sexuality even as he fears that his own loves may have deepened the rift between his parents. <br>  <br> Lush and innovative these essays contemplate childhood memories and family secrets religion and queerness in the rural South and the ways rituals and contours of manhood are passed through generations. Most of all we feel with Mason what it is to grapple with and love a place even as you yearn to leave.<br>