NAMES OF RIVERS, THE - Hardcover

"Let the word go out: There's a new Hemingway loose in America."

"The Names of Rivers is a stunning look into the dark violence at the root of men's souls. It will leave you sickened like a gut-punch, but it will also make you want to come back for more."

"Intensely written...displays a remarkably exacting touch...[and] surefooted storytelling skills."

"Austerely beautiful prose. An elliptical, memorable read."

"A haunting novel of family hurt and retribution that is beautiful in style and execution."

Set in a 1980s rustbelt town south of Chicago, NAMES OF RIVERS tells the story of Bruno Konick, an aged veteran of 'the good war' who has spent a lifetime haunted by his own actions during the liberation of Dachau Concentration Camp; and his grandson Luke, a teenage boy forever dreaming of heroism in a post-Vietnam America. Together, they watch Luke's father Bruce, an unemployed factory worker badly disfigured during the siege of Khe Sanh, wander towards his suicidal end in a cornfield ruined by a freakish ice storm. When the youngest son Len unexpectedly returns home, recovered from the heroin addiction he acquired as a hospital corpsman in Saigon, he brings with him an old wound that Bruno Konick can never let himself touch. From a variety of perspectives, Buckman examines the complex relationships between fathers and sons, between men and history, weaving a cohesive novel rich in life's substance.