Fourth of July Creek

by Smith Henderson

Overview

In this shattering and iconic American novel, PEN prize-winning writer, Smith Henderson explores the complexities of freedom, community, grace, suspicion and anarchy, brilliantly depicting our nation's disquieting and violent contradictions.

After trying to help Benjamin Pearl, an undernourished, nearly feral eleven-year-old boy living in the Montana wilderness, social worker Pete Snow comes face to face with the boy's profoundly disturbed father, Jeremiah. With courage and caution, Pete slowly earns a measure of trust from this paranoid survivalist itching for a final conflict that will signal the coming End Times.

But as Pete's own family spins out of control, Pearl's activities spark the full-blown interest of the F.B.I., putting Pete at the center of a massive manhunt from which no one will emerge unscathed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062286468
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	03/10/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	179,632
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Smith Henderson is the author of Fourth of July Creek and lives in California and Montana.

Editorial Reviews

Tremendously satisfying—think Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone...or Jimmy McNulty...set...in...another kind of violent American wilderness...[a] mesmerizing accomplishment. I cannot think of a finer first novel; it’s hard, in fact, to think of a finer second, third, or fourth one, either.

Antonya Nelson

First novels don’t come much more confidently written or fully imagined than this.

New York Times

Henderson’s firm understanding of rural Montana and its residents reminds one of Kent Haruf’s novels set in Colorado, but, as if Cormac McCarthy has come to town, there’s an undercurrent of violence and vice throbbing throughout the story. Henderson understands the explosive possibilities of having those tensions surface.

Cleveland Plain Dealer

This book left me awestruck; a stunning debut which reads like the work of a writer at the height of his power…Fourth of July Creek is a masterful achievement and Smith Henderson is certain to end up a household name.

Philipp Meyer

Another big, gripping novel and fine feat of naturalistic storytelling.

Janet Maslin

Fourth of July Creek is an astonishing read. The writing is energetic and precise. Henderson has a mastery of scale that allows this particular place and these particular people to illuminate who we are as Americans...I could not recommend this book more highly.

Kevin Powers

In Henderson’s impressive novel, an overburdened social worker becomes involved with a near-feral boy and his survivalist father in 1980 Montana.

New York Times Book Review

[A] remarkable first novel...

Shelf Awareness

Fourth of July Creek is the beautifully written story of a flawed man trying to save children from bad people like himself… a richly satisfying novel and well worth its reader’s time.

Tullahoma News

Henderson, a Montana native, is a nimble wordsmith… His debut novel gives us flawed people, a bleak setting, and a story that’s impossible to forget.

Parnassus Books / Musing

Breathtaking...heartbreaking…Henderson’s immersive, colorful style makes this scenic journey worthwhile. He’s a curious kind of hard-boiled poet - part Raymond Chandler, part Denis Johnson.

Entertainment Weekly

The best book I’ve read so far this year...Henderson choreographs these parts so masterfully that the novel is never less than wholly engaging… All week I was looking for opportunities to slip back into these pages and follow the trials of this rural social worker.

Washington Post

This is a hell of a great book.”-

Esquire

A soul-wrenching debut novel... Henderson’s talents lie in the tenderness and empathy he extends to (almost) every character in the book, no matter how damaged.

the Oprah Magazine O

Fourth of July Creek knocked me flat. This gorgeous, full-bodied novel seems to contain all of America at what was, in retrospect, a pivotal moment in its history...Smith Henderson has delivered nothing less than a masterpiece of a novel.

Ben Fountain

[A] stunningly accomplished debut novel … Henderson’s narrative enthralls, his dialogue crackles, and on the considerable strength of this, a promising literary career beckons.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

This is an impressive, bold, ambitious book, an unforgettable epic that confidently navigates big themes and breaks your heart with small tragedies.

Miami Herald

Probably the most significant book to come from a Portland writer in the past year is Smith Henderson’s Fourth of July Creek… one of the most assured and accomplished debut novels in recent memory, right up there with Zadie Smith’s White Teeth. The book… is both savage and beautiful.

Willamette Week (Portland)

Fourth of July Creek cannot possibly be Smith Henderson’s first book. Its scope is audacious, its range virtuosic, its gaze steady and true. A riveting story written in a seductive and relentlessly authentic rural American vernacular, this is the kind of novel I wish I’d written.

Claire Vaye Watkins

Born and raised in Montana, author Smith Henderson knows the terrain and its people, crafting a profoundly American tale that explores our love for freedom, our individualism and the price people sometimes pay.

AARP

I was blown away by Smith Henderson’s debut novel, Fourth of July Creek....

Dallas Morning News

...a masterful debut...we find ourselves rooting for these deeply human characters in the end.

The Oregonian (Portland)

This is an impressive, bold, ambitious book, an unforgettable epic that confidently navigates big themes and breaks your heart with small tragedies.

Miami Herald

A soul-wrenching debut novel... Henderson’s talents lie in the tenderness and empathy he extends to (almost) every character in the book, no matter how damaged.

O: the Oprah Magazine

Tremendously satisfying—think Daniel Woodrell’s Winter’s Bone...or Jimmy McNulty...set...in...another kind of violent American wilderness...[a] mesmerizing accomplishment. I cannot think of a finer first novel; it’s hard, in fact, to think of a finer second, third, or fourth one, either.

Antonya Nelson

The best book I’ve read so far this year...Henderson choreographs these parts so masterfully that the novel is never less than wholly engaging… All week I was looking for opportunities to slip back into these pages and follow the trials of this rural social worker.

Washington Post

Breathtaking...heartbreaking…Henderson’s immersive, colorful style makes this scenic journey worthwhile. He’s a curious kind of hard-boiled poet - part Raymond Chandler, part Denis Johnson.

Entertainment Weekly (Grade A)

“First novels don’t come much more confidently written or fully imagined than this.

The New York Times

…this not-to-be-missed first novel…is a Rorschach test of sorts. It may remind readers of many different writers, even though it's such an original. Mr. Henderson has prompted comparisons to a long list of novelists who've written about grim, hardscrabble lives in eloquent prose…a mix of Richard Ford's writing style with characters by Richard Russo. I'd add that there is much of early Russell Banks in Pete's keen awareness of his failings and desperate yearning for the decency that remains just out of reach. And there are hints of [another] bolt-from-the-blue debut: David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (2008). This book is far darker…But its gripping story and shimmering sense of the natural world do bring that great debut to mind.

The New York Times - Janet Maslin

★ 04/15/2014
Pete Snow is a social worker in early 1980s small-town Montana whose life is nearly as troubled as those of his clients. He is separated from his wife and teenage daughter, estranged from his father and stepmother, and easing his problems with alcohol. One morning Pete receives a call regarding a strange young boy who has shown up at a local school. Benjamin Pearl is the son of Jeremiah Pearl, a reclusive survivalist who lives in the hills outside town. Pete tries to help ragged and undernourished Benjamin but soon runs afoul of the paranoid Jeremiah. Through persistence, Pete slowly gains a degree of trust from Jeremiah and is able to provide some assistance. But when Jeremiah's activities draw the interest of the FBI, Pete is caught up in the web of suspicion. As the noose tightens, Jeremiah's dark secrets will profoundly affect Pete as well. VERDICT On a political level, Henderson skillfully presages the contemporary political environment in his portrayal of the America of three decades ago. On a deeper level, this dark, compassionate novel finds in Jeremiah's—and Pete's—pain a mirror of everyone's. This is a significant debut. [See Prepub Alert, 12/16/13.]—Lawrence Rungren, Andover, MA

Library Journal

2014-05-15
Of wide open spaces and lives narrowly, desperately lived at the bitter ends of dirt and gravel roads.The spur of the Rockies at the northwestern corner of Montana is as hard and remote a stretch of country as any in the Lower 48, good reason why a person might want to disappear into it. Social worker Pete Snow, delivered to us in medias res, is well-used to what happens to people with too little money and too much booze or meth in tow. But he's not quite prepared for how years of being used to such things can wear a person down—and what will touch him off to the point that he's willing to smack a client. Says Pete to his target, trying to explain the rightness of his act, "[t]hose punches sure as shit come through me but they were not mine. As meant for you as they were, they were not mine." He's willing to cop to most responsibilities, but that doesn't stop his own life from dissolving. Meanwhile, he's caught up in a curious knot: In a land of snarling dogs and WIC checks, he has to sort out the life of a very nearly feral child, bound up in the even more complex life of a survivalist, paranoid and anti-statist, who may or may not be a Unabomber in the making. That brings the feds into the picture, and if Pete resorts to fisticuffs reluctantly, the FBI thinks nothing of beating their way around a countryside that looks ever more apocalyptic with each passing page. Henderson, a native Montanan, finds ample room for deep-turning plot twists in the superficially simple matter of a man looking for meaning in his own life while trying to help others too proud and mistrustful to receive that assistance. The story goes on a bit long, but the details are just right: It's expertly written and without a false note, if often quite bleak.Of a piece with Peter Heller's The Dog Stars and Cormac McCarthy's The Road in imagining a rural West that's seen better days—and perhaps better people, too.

Kirkus Reviews

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