Products tagged with 'john enger'

Radium is about two bad-luck brothers from a bad-luck town in the flat farmland of western Minnesota. Jim, the narrator, is fifteen and damaged, the result of a car accident years before that left him with a head injury and a tweaked view of the world. He sees his big brother, Billy Quinn, in near mythic terms. Billy is wild and strong and capable of things other men are not.

They live together in a trailer house on the ditch-side of a beet field until Billy gets into bad trouble, and then they go on the run. That’s what wild young men like Billy—growing up rangy and unsupervised in the desperate middle of this country—do when trouble comes. They run. They drive cars fast. They go west. They live on the lam, always about three days from a federal manhunt.

Laws are broken, but with an older brother his only true friend on earth—a brother he loves more than his own next breath—Jim justifies their deeds, willing to do . . . anything . . . to keep Billy free.

Hardcover, 400 pages

Follow this link for a splendid, intellectual interview with John about writing and Radium.