In progress

Trailer Boy

A Novel

Forthcoming

A young adult novel grounded in Mary Eberstadt's home territory — rural, blue-collar, upstate New York. Set in the 1990s, during the height of the opioid epidemic and under the strains of the Rust Belt, Trailer Boy is told through the eyes of Vedder Hale, a precocious ten-year-old who rotates among his grandparents, his mother and her boyfriend, a troubled uncle, and Dre, Vedder's younger half-brother.

At a time when mainstream fiction is dominated by identity politics and victimhood, this book — realist in style and devoid of sentimentality — flips the cultural script. Authentic, dark, and comedic, its themes reach far beyond the particularities of its time and place to sound universal notes about turn-of-the-century America from the perspective of its most forgotten citizens.

Key to its storytelling are themes of redemption, fallenness and grace, and one of the least explored and most critical moral restorations of our time: the protectiveness and love that endures for one's own despite the post-1960s disruption and destruction of family. Entertaining and never didactic, Trailer Boy is a redemptive tale for an age that has largely turned its back on redemption.