Dade Hamilton has just graduated from an Iowa high school and he has 3 months ahead of him before leaving for college in Michigan. His secret relationship with the popular football player Pablo is coming to an end, he wrestles with coming out to his parents and friends, and he watches as his parents’ marriage unravels before him. He just wants to make it through one final summer in suburban wasteland and then start over in the Fall. But then he meets mysterious, gorgeous Alex Kincaid – who ignites things in Dade he wasn’t expecting: real love, truth, self-respect and hope.
The Vast Fields of Ordinary perfectly captures languid, warm summer days filled with everyday monotony and boredom and turns them into something extraordinary. Nick Burd’s detailed and succinct prose sets the mood and the tone for a novel about everyday nothingness and carefully weaves in a tapestry of emotions, awakenings, and yearning that captures this time in his characters lives perfectly. All of the characters are breathless – waiting for something, anything, to come along and give meaning to their lives, to provide a connection or a spark, or offer a means of escape. Burd draws both the teen characters and Dade’s parents with understanding, sympathy, and poignant honesty as each stands at his or her own personal crossroads, unsure of which direction to take.
- Posted by Cori