Radium

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.

$29.95

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

JOHN ENGER is a writer, woodworker, and former journalist. By the end of his ten-year news career, John's award-winning work reached one million listeners each week on Minnesota Public Radio and countless more through the dozens of platforms that picked up his stories. His byline appeared in USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, and on regular contract work for National Public Radio. 

Now he splits his time between building custom furniture and writing fiction. John lives with his wife, Emily, and their two children in the woods of northern Minnesota. See more of John's writing at johnenger.info. Find his woodwork at engergrove.com 

ISBN: 978-1-946163-33-2

Page count: 404

Picture Count: 1

Hardcover

Publication Year: 2022