Dust

Dust is a story about loyalty and longing, about the courage it takes to leave, and the grace required to let someone go. It's about the lives of quiet despair of factory workers and waitresses in an industrial town in 1950's Oklahoma. Seth Manton is twenty-four, works the factory line cutting asbestos pipe, and spends his nights at the Rough Riders bar, where Dover holds court with terrible jokes and the jukebox plays Hank Williams on repeat.

His father is dying from the same dust Seth breathes eight hours a day but still laughs at his old stories. Dover naively believes loyalty to his factory bosses will be rewarded. And Buck blames migrant workers for the heartless choices the industrialists make anyway. Seth's ex, Linda Sue is drowning her sorrows and her disappointment, and while flipping burgers and serving coffee at the diner, Jessie dreams of following Osage born, prima ballerina, Maria Tallchief, who wowed international audiences and danced for Stravinsky.

Seth dreams of a better life in California, growing food as a farmer, instead of toiling in an asbestos factory and dying young. Everyone dreams of something better in this small town, but standing out is never easy, even when fitting in is hard.

For readers who loved the stark beauty of Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, the quiet desperation of Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road, and the fierce tenderness of Kent Haruf's Plainsong, Dust is an unforgettable debut about the price of staying, the cost of leaving, and realize you deserve a life that doesn't kill you.