Early Reviewers

Set in a beautiful but economically devastated Pennsylvania steel town, a lush landscape as deceptively promising as the edifices of the abandoned steel mills that once provided the livelihood of generations, Philipp Meyer’s brilliant debut is a novel of the lost American dream and the desperation that arises from its loss. From local bars to train yards to prison, it is the story of two young men bound to the town by family, responsibility, inertia, and the beauty around them, who dream of a future beyond the factories, abandoned homes, and polluted river. Evoking John Steinbeck’s novels of restless lives during the Great Depression, AMERICAN RUST takes us into contemporary American heartland at a moment of profound unrest and uncertainty about the future. It is a dark but lucid vision, a moving novel about the bleak realities that battle our desire for transcendence, and the power of love and friendship to redeem us.