American Crow

Beneath a hopeful new suburb carved from the echoes of war, an old hunger stirs, awakened by an itinerant stranger whose gifts reveal what the town has tried to bury: The past is not done feeding.

It’s 1952, and a dark force gathers in the nearly completed subdivision of Brookshire, Maryland, a place meant to promise safety and security for those ready to establish roots after the chaos and sacrifice of World War II. This maleficent thrum feeds off the trauma and quiet rage dwelling in those veterans who have returned home to claim their piece of the American Dream—the quarter-acre lot, the pretty wife, the docile children.

That promise begins to waver when a cryptic bookbinder arrives in town, leaving handmade books in trees and mailboxes that speak to the secrets tucked behind storm doors and chain-link fences. His bond with an equally misunderstood young girl reveals further mysteries tying this stranger’s own history to Brookshire’s fate, as a makeshift tribe readies for battle against the eking growing in their town.

A debut novel about secrets, community, and the insatiable amoral emptiness that is the true embodiment of war, American Crow tells a thrilling, page-turning story set against the darkest echoes of humanity.

Advance praise for American Crow:

“An ambitious and mysterious novel about love, loss, and community, Ryan Burruss’s American Crow digs beneath the troubled surface of a town haunted by the dark specters of violence and war. Burruss is a tremendous talent—his prose sings and dances, throws off sparks, flashes out bolts of bright lightning. He skillfully digs into his many characters’ hearts and minds with delicacy, insight, and a deep wellspring of empathy. What a terrific debut!”

—Dino Enrique Piacentini, author of Invasion of the Daffodils

“From its shocking prologue to its inexorable conclusion, American Crow examines an America of veterans and war widows haunted by a violent past bleeding through the present. It is a postwar world in which each character is a riddle seeking to be solved, even if the solution is sometimes savage.”

—John Biguenet, author of Oyster and The Torturer’s Apprentice

“With a poet’s eye for the darkness of humanity, Burruss has written a stylized noir that delivers on surprise and intrigue. In this layered tableau of postwar suburbia, American Crow tells an intricate tale of horror and desire where the townspeople of Brookshire, Maryland, are haunted—veterans by the war, wives by their husbands, everyone by the past. Written with passion and intelligence, this debut aims high and exceeds expectations.”

—Blake Sanz, author of The Boundaries of Their Dwelling