Boarded Windows

Almost Famous meets Portnoy’s Complaint: A record store clerk in search of his origins confronts his con-man father figure.

Wade Salem is a charismatic aesthete, drug dealer, and journeyman country musician. He’s also a complicated father figure to this novel’s narrator, whose cloudy childhood becomes both clearer and more confusing through Wade’s stories, jokes, and lectures. Through the eyes of a keenly observant, underemployed record collector, Wade emerges as a sly, disruptive force, at ...