Boys of Alabama: A Novel

Product Description
A “soul-stirring debut,” Boys of Alabama tells the “bewitching” (Michelle Hart, O, The Oprah Magazine) tale of sixteen-year-old Max’s first year in America.\n“Daring, unusual . . . and startlingly fresh” (Don Noble, Alabama Public Radio), Boys of Alabama announced Genevieve Hudson’s place in the canon of the southern gothic alongside Donna Tartt and Harper Lee. Newly arrived in Alabama, Max falls in love, questions his faith, and navigates a strange power. Although his German parents don’t know what to make of a South pining for the past, shy Max thrives after being taken in by the football team. But when he meets fishnet-wearing Pan in physics class, they embark on a quixotic, consuming relationship. Writing in “prose that is always imaginative and sensual” (Sarah Neilson, Believer), Hudson offers a complex portrait of masculinity, religion, immigration, and the adolescent pressures that require total conformity.
Amazon.com Review
This coming of age story is dreamlike in the best way: each character feels real even as the story itself is strange – not least because the main character, teenage Max, has the ability to bring birds and plants back to life. He sees his power of resurrection as another unwelcome boundary between him and other kids, a borderline addiction, even, since he craves the sharp hit of sweetness –lilac crunch, wet raspberries – from each soul he tastes by placing it back.
When Max’s parents move the family from Germany to Alabama for a job in the auto industry, shy, gay Max embraces the South wholly: the breath-stealing heat, the intimacy of group prayer, the larger-than-life personalities, and the effortless friendship of the football team he joins. As Max’s relationship deepens with a femme boy named Pan, so does his fascination with a dangerous and charismatic local strain of Christianity. The adults are harboring as many secrets as the teenagers, and the book explores how emotional vulnerability and physical brutality carry equal power to hurt. Simple sentences, subtly shifted diction, and the suppleness of POV that comes from not using quotation marks make this story difficult to put down and genuinely unique. A beautifully inscribed invitation to see masculinity, the American South, and even God through fresh eyes, suggesting that what most defines us is what we celebrate and mourn. —Katy Ball
Review
Boys of Alabama brilliantly reinvents the Southern Gothic... An absolutely magical novel.--Leni Zumas, author of Red Clocks\nBoys of Alabama perfectly captures the magic and inevitable heartache of young lust.--Kimberly King Parsons, author of Black Light\n[Depicts] a brand of Southern-fried masculinity that is immediately recognizable and startlingly fresh. This is an exquisite book.--Nick White, author of How to Survive a Summer\nA gripping, uncanny, and queer exploration of being a boy in America, told with detail that dazzles and disturbs.--Michelle Tea, author of Against Memoir\nGenevieve Hudson creates a new American erotics of longing and belonging, flush with want and desire, hope and home, translation and transformation.--Matt Bell, author of Scrapper\nGenevieve Hudson dismantles and spins a new category of fairy tale for us, one that's equal parts dirt and splendor. A glinting, dark beauty. An incantation.--T Kira Madden, author of Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girl\nHudson goes right to a place where violence comes from--uncomfortably close to desire for magic, God, sex, whatever might actually heal us--and doesn't turn away.--Kristin Dombek, author of The Selfishness of Others\nOne of the finest--and weirdest!--first novels I've read in quite some long time.--Tom Bissell, author of Apostle and coauthor of The Disaster Artist\nReminds us that behind so many of America's most rigid beliefs lies the lonely human heart: twitchy, slippery, alive.--Mikkel Rosengaard, author of The Invention of Ana\nThis novel is a love song to outsiders of all