Description

“Striking.... An author is lucky to bring one character so vividly to life: the gifted McIntyre has done it for all of his.” —New York Times Book Review

“I felt as if I were reading a modern-day Middlemarch.” — Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of The Great Man

A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley Award, Lake Overturn is the stirring debut novel of small-town America from critically acclaimed author Vestal McIntyre (You Are Not the One). With intricate plots involving an array of fully realized characters, and dealing with themes such as autism, homosexuality, religion, and addiction, Lake Overturn is sure to appeal to fans of the literary work of Russell Banks (The Sweet Hereafter, Affliction), Rick Moody (The Ice Storm), Augusten Burroughs (Running with Scissors), and Alice Munro (The Moons of Jupiter, The Love of a Good Woman).

About the Author

Vestal McIntyre's story collection, You Are Not the One, won a Lambda Literary Award and earned him fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts.

Praise For…

“A vast, intricate lattice of relationships, reminiscent of the novels of Richard Russo. . . . McIntyre is an honest enough artist that he [is] . . . capable of handling even the most noxious elements when he stirs his American backwater.” — Washington Post

“Striking. . . . An author is lucky to bring one character so vividly to life: the gifted McIntyre...has done it for all of his. It may seem odd praise for a writer, but it’s among the highest: as you drink in this book, you barely notice the words.” — New York Times Book Review

“Lake Overturn is a lovingly rendered portrait of small-town America. Vestal McIntyre knows his people intimately—how they speak, their manners and customs; but, most importantly, he knows their troubled hearts, and he plumbs the depths of those hearts with remarkable empathy and wisdom.” — Ron Rash, author of Serena

“Reading Vestal McIntyre’s deliriously ambrosial novel is like entering reader’s heaven. Constantly surprising. . . . I loved it.” — Peter Cameron, award-winning author of The City of Your Final Destination

“What a great relief [it is] to read Vestal McIntyre’s splendid first novel. . . . Lake Overturn is loving and searing and sad and, above all, a pleasure to read.” — Adam Haslett, author of You Are Not a Stranger Here

“Every character in [Lake Overturn] is so real, complex, and interesting, the scope of the novel at once so wide and so deep, the themes and ideas so thoroughly embodied by the story, I felt as if I were reading a modern-day Middlemarch.” — Kate Christensen, PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author of The Great Man

“[Keeps] us engrossed from the beginning. . . . He illuminates with humor and sympathy the mundane lives of a group of vivid characters.” — Library Journal

“Richly imagined and fully realized, Overturn has given us what we didn’t know we were waiting for: the next Great Idahoan Novel.” — Out Magazine

“This astonishing novel — a great big captivating, multi-character drama set in Eula, Idaho — has McIntyre juggling a half-dozen intersecting plots and people with extraordinary grace.” — Philadelphia Gay News

“[A] nicely handled exploration of the world’s effect on the tightly woven life of a small town driven by faith.” — Denver Post

“[A] deliriously colorful and deliciously engrossing tapestry of a small-town’s depressing poverty, pointless pettiness, quirky rivalries, domestic infidelities, desperate drug use, onerous class and race divisions – and occasional quiet, sentimental triumphs.” — Q Syndicate

A Best Book of 2009 — Washington Post Book World