The best people in the world - Justin Tussing

A lyrical coming-of-age story from a brilliant new voice in American fiction.

Thomas, a seventeen-year-old with the face of an angel, is living with his parents in a house that has begun to feel crowded: Alice, his high-school teacher and first love, is getting calls from her violent ex-husband; and Shiloh, a survivor of a life lived on the fringes, has seen his shack swept away by the mighty Ohio.

They run away together - in pursuit of an ideal that none of them are quite able to define - finding shelter in an abandoned farmhouse in the hills of Vermont. But as the chill of autumn sets in, dependency and deprivation begin to take their toll and Thomas starts to see this time - when he was with 'the best people in the world' - come to an end.

A journey, a coming of age, a novel of our need to hold onto meaning in whatever form it may take, 'The Best People in the World' is a masterful illumination of a moment when everything was perfect and the realisation that nothing gold can stay.