The Best People In The World

"What might have been the stuff of boyish fantasies--an affair with a teacher, running away from home, living off the land--goes frighteningly awry in this unsettling but bleakly beautiful debut novel."--"Publishers Weekly."

In Paducah, Kentucky, seventeen-year-old Thomas feels as reined in as the mighty Ohio, a river confined by high floodwalls protecting his small Southern hometown. But all boundaries vanish when Thomas experiences first love with Alice, his new history teacher, a woman eight years his senior--and when he meets Shiloh, a misfit vagabond and anarchist who becomes his new role model. Fleeing to rural Vermont, this unlikely trio boldly pursues freedom, intimacy, and seclusion, unfettered by commitments and rules. But a life apart from the world does not ensure a life apart from the past--and for one of them, the past that emerges will threaten tragedy.