This review is written in conjunction with Battenkill Books, my local bookstore, if you choose to purchase the book, please consider buying it from Battenkill or from your local independent bookstore, thanks.

“Shotgun Lovesongs,” a novel by Nickolas Butler is one of the most bally-hooed indie books of the Spring, and I am happy to say it more than lives up to the hype and expectations. This quite wonderful and touching first novel of small town life and community – something I live every day of my life – centers on the lives and friendship of four men, all of whom grew up together in the small Wisconsin town of Little Wing.

In a sense, they span the social and economic gambit. One never left, still working his family farm. One trades commodities in Chicago, one took to the rodeo circuit, one hit it big as a rock start. Beth, a fifth character is a beautiful, grounded and loving women who is connected in different ways to each of these men.

All four are brought together for a wedding and the book explores the bonds, stresses, pain and love in their friendships. This is a terrific book, one of the best novels I’ve read in a while and it will reach deeply into the hearts of people who come from small towns or live there still. It is a book about community, about lives entwined by circumstance and geography. Like many other small and rural towns, Little Wing has been left behind by the economists and bureaucrats and politicians in Washington. America has forgotten its small towns, taken the jobs away and left them to struggle and fend for themselves.

They are generally considered inefficient and insignificant in the new global economy, lives are a struggle, it means something to be a neighbor, it means something to be a friend.

This question of friendship and what it means is gracefully but powerfully explored in “Shotgun Lovesongs,” we get a rich and honest portrait of small town life, it is a very heartfelt story of young and caring men driven to understand their lives and come to terms with the meaning both of friendship and community. In the age of the depressing and self-referential Brooklyn novel, this writing right comes from the heartland and is appropriately full of heart. It is also very real. Life goes on in the heartland, you just never see or hear about it on the news, unless there is a tornado or murder.

I dearly love my small town community, I feel more connected to it everyday. We have to get to know one another, we have no choice, and we have to figure things out, even when there are problems. We see one another all of the time, we know everybody’s business, a blessing and a curse.  And we need one another in the most profound and literal ways.

In this story, one man stays on his family, the other returns from Chicago to try to save the small town’s decaying old mill, the rock star always comes back to rest and ground himself, and the rodeo rider struggles to regain his place in the world after getting hurt. Their paths cross back and forth, they each take terms narrating this most American and rich of stories.

Like so many current novels, this story could have ended a click sooner, there is just one twist or two too many, but that is a nit. I highly recommend this brilliant and penetrating piece of work, it will grab the heart and soul of anyone who cherishes the values and connections of the small town American community.

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You can purchase this book by ordering it on the Battenkill Books website or by calling the store at 518 677-2515. They ship anywhere and take Paypal.