Pryor Rendering

Charlie Hope lives in the dusty, working-class town of Pryor, Oklahoma. In this stunning debut novel glowing with life and character, Gary Reed tells the compelling and hauntingly real story of Charlie's life from the age of seven to the cusp of manhood—and his growing recognition of the possibility of a life beyond the small world he's always known. Charlie's house is heavy with silence and tension. His passionately religious mother fills his head with unlikely stories of his dead father. Only his gruff, hard-drinking grandfather, Chick, offers an alternative to the monotony of life in Pryor. For as long as Charlie can remember, his days have revolved around the rhythms of Chick's bar and his barhopping binges in Tulsa. In a narrative that slowly peels away layers of identity and emotion, Charlie begins to find out the truth about his enigmatic father's death and his mother's past—and to discover the way his own life can touch the perimeters of other lives. When he meets Dewar, a boy in the local orphanage, Charlie finds a best friend at last. But in helping Dewar escape from the abuse at the home, Charlie will come to understand that loving this vulnerable young man may mean letting him go free— in a move with the potential to break his heart. Populated with wonderfully authentic Western characters, a setting so palpable that you can feel the dryness of the wind, and a hero so genuine and appealing that he pulls us completely into his world, Pryor Rendering is a dazzling tale about one young man's emotional and sexual awakening to the possibility of a future in a larger world.