Dimensions
137 x 216 x 27mm
The answer to Doug Willis' mid-life crisis is a sabbatical at his rural retreat in Preston Falls, two months spent restoring the faded splendour of the farmhouse, reading Dickens in the evening and watching summer gently fade to autumn. But following a marathon whiskey drinking session, a disastrous attempt to tear out the living-room ceiling and an incident with a sheriff at a local campsite, Willis ends his first weekend away in jail, and it's clear that the wired, burned-out New York copy-writer within is still very much to the fore.
What follows is a comic, fiercely compassionate novel, in which David Gates' protagonist grapples with Neil Young powerchords on his vintage Telecaster and gets involved with some shady drug-running locals, while attempting to keep the lid on his sanity and some perspective on his disintegrating marriage. And as his wife Jean struggles to pay the bills and raise their sullen, sceptical kids, Willis' "break" crumbles into Dewars- and Cocaine-fuelled disarray, and he embarks on another kind of journey altogether.
