The year is 1985, and twenty two year old Galen lives with his emotionally dependent mother in a secluded old house surrounded by a walnut orchard in a suburb of Sacramento. He doesn't know who his father is, his abusive grandfather is dead, and his grandmother, losing her memory, has been shipped off to a nursing home. Galen and his mother survive on the family's trust fund—old money that his aunt, Helen, and seventeen year old cousin, Jennifer, are determined to get their hands on.
Galen, a New Age believer who considers himself an old soul, yearns for transformation: to free himself from the corporeal, to be as weightless as air, to walk on water. But he's powerless to stop the manic binges that overtake him, leading him to fixate on forbidden desires. A prisoner of his body, he is obsessed with thoughts of the boldly flirtatious Jennifer and dreams of shedding himself of the clinging mother whose fears and needs weigh him down.
When the family takes a trip to an old cabin in the Sierras, near South Lake Tahoe, tensions crescendo. Caught in a compromising position, Galen will discover the shocking truth of just how far he will go to attain the transcendence he craves.
An exhilarating portrayal of a legacy of violence and madness, Dirt is an entirely feverish read.
About the Author
David Vann (b. born October 19, 1966 on Adak island, Alaska) is an author and creative writing professor at the University of San Francisco.
His internationally bestselling books have won 14 awards, including the Prix Médicis étranger 2010 in France for best foreign novel (for Sukkwan Island) and the Premi Llibreter 2011 in Spain for best foreign novel, have appeared on more than 65 “Best Books of the Year” lists in 12 countries, and are being published in 18 languages.
Vann was awarded the 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship for creative arts, fiction, and has been a National Endowment of the Arts fellow, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and John L’Heureux fellow. His work has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Outside, Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, the Sunday Times, the Observer, the Guardian, the Sunday Telegraph, the Financial Times, Elle UK, Esquire (UK Edition), Esquire Russia, National Geographic Adventure, Writer’s Digest, McSweeney's, and other magazines and newspapers.
He has appeared in documentaries with the BBC, Nova, National Geographic, CNN, and E! Entertainment. His books have been selected for the New Yorker Book Club, the Times Book Club, the Samlerens Bogklub in Denmark, read on the BBC and North German Radio, and optioned for film. Vann has done hundreds of interviews and author events, including 30 International Book Festival. |
Print
Dirt