The Book of Rusty - Paperback

by Benjamin Drevlow (Author)

Cowboy Jamboree Press

Another testament of Benjamin Drevlow

An inventive structure and dark humor balance the raw heartbreak of this honest and brutal cultural critique disguised as a comedy. No one writes about toxic masculinity with as much bravery and empathy as Ben Drevlow.
-Meagan Lucas, author of Songbirds and Stray Dogs, Editor-in-Chief of Reckon Review

What I want to say about The Book of Rusty feels like praise Rusty himself wouldn't accept: he tends to shrug off whatever encouragement comes his way, usually with something funny or profane or self-deprecating. But whether or not he'd agree, this is a time-bending, mind-bending book of misadventures in which a guy who can't catch a break tries like hell to save his own life, whether that means walking through traffic in stolen underwear or finding the words to tell a story about it.
-Caitlin Horrocks author of The Vexations, Life Among the Terranauts, and This Is Not Your City

One hand cleaning the shitter and the other busy writing his mem-wah is where we meet our main man Rusty. Do you want the truth or do you want a story? Well, Rusty's doing his best to give the world both if he could only catch a break that isn't his own nose. If you're looking for a fairytale you can stop reading now. This is a story of humanity and how real life shakes out for the great big all of us who dare to wake up in the morning. And when you deal in the prickly thicket of human-ness, things tend to get a little dirty and painful. The Book of Rusty covers love, loss, basketball, time travel, and the entire gamut of human existence at a page tearing speed. Get in and buckle up, naked angel lady, we're going back in time, and forward again.
-Micah Schnable, singer/guitarist of Two Cow Garage

The Book of Rusty is a circus fest of outsiders and freaks, thrown into a masterful whirlpool of mayhem. Drevlow is a skillful ratskellar tale-teller, drawing from dregs and putrid ripening of growth, splintering into unforeseen factions. Rusty wrings the reader out with its unrelenting twists, its downspun dogma, its rope-a-dope brilliance! You won't want to put it down!
-Robert Vaughan, author of ASKEW

Drevlow weaves a tumultuous coming-of-age fevered carnival. The Book of Rusty is a time-bending kaleidoscope of past and present, straddles the trauma of adolescence, ruptured family tragedy, and the heft of parental dismissal. Clawing over landmines of guilt and rage, Drevlow's staggering pathos, implodes with the claustrophobic culmination of hemmed in yesterdays. Get a copy! Unforgettable and urgent. LOVE!
-Meg Tuite, author of White Van

Benjamin Drevlow is not one to pull punches. The Book of Rusty is where he hits hardest with incisive prose that communicate a story about masculinity, ambition, basketball, love, cycles, the nature of time, storytelling itself, and plenty more. Drevlow's greatest gift to his readers is a compulsion toward truth in all things, as even the smallest victories are earned via grit and blunt-force trauma. The reader can't help but root for Rusty when his chances at glory are slimmest and most distant. In the end, Rusty represents something fundamental about this foolhardy endeavor we call humanity, and no one has told the tale with quite Drevlow's vision before.
-Mike Chin, author of My Grandfather's an Immigrant, and So Is Yours

Drevlow has spent his career bleeding on the page and how there's any blood left is nothing short of a miracle. And that's what this is. A miracle of truth and a miracle of life. Here is a testament that breathes and bruises and, ultimately, heals.
-Jared Yates Sexton, author of The Man They Wanted Me to Be: Toxic Masculinity and a Crisis of Our Own Making