The Jackals

Product Description Jack Dotson finally has everything he wants: the promotion he's spent years working for, a house in a trendy neighborhood near downtown Louisville, and a future with Lauren, his stunning, smart, too-good-for-him girlfriend. Then he gets the call that his childhood best friend Mark has died, forcing Jack to do what he never thought he would: return to the sleepy, Midwestern hometown he ran away from years ago. The plan? Give his condolences to Mark's family and make amends with the friends he left behind. Unfortunately, home isn't the place Jack remembers, blowing this to bits and forcing him to confront everything he ran away from. The best friend he betrayed. The girl who might have loved him. The town that's grown to hate him. Determined to do right by Mark, Jack commits to attending the funeral and apologizing, but the results are disastrous. Fists start flying, old love interests reignite, and Jack's carefully curated life in Louisville starts slipping through his fingertips, leaving him to wonder who his true friends are and what he even ran away from in the first place. Full of wit and wisdom, The Jackals is a humorous, heartfelt look at the complexities of friendship and the ways we try to overcome our mistakes. Review "The returning pariah is its own subgenre of coming-of-age story, but Adam Shaw has found a new take with The Jackals. Jack Dotson knows it's too late to make things right before he even crosses the county line. And that's before the unwelcoming committee strikes. It doesn't stop him from trying, even if the best he can do is reexamine exactly why he banished himself in the first place. A fast-paced debut brimming with conflict." - James Bailey, author of Sorry I Wasn't What You Needed"Fans of Jonathan Tropper will enjoy this coming-of-age story about the bond of friendship, the pain of betrayal, and the always-shocking realization that you can't go home again without consequences." - Matthew Hanover, author of Not Famous About the Author Adam Shaw lives with his wife and daughter in Louisville, Kentucky and holds an MFA in fiction writing from Concordia University, St. Paul. His short fiction and essays on relationships, masculinity, and fatherhood have appeared in Across the Margin, 1:1000, Sledgehammer Lit, and elsewhere. He can be found on his blog at theshawspot.com and on Instagram and Twitter at @adamshaw502. The Jackals is his first novel.