*Gold medal winner for contemporary fiction - 2015 Independent Publisher Book Awards. John Ritter, a frustrated artist, demonstrates that self-destruction can be a form of protest--or maybe just the last resort for those who refuse to grow up. After years of adventure on the West Coast, he returns to Cincinnati to care for his grandmother, who suffers from Alzheimer's, and to protect her farmland from commercial development. Still in love with his ex-girlfriend and his youthful ideals, John lives in denial of the facts that his ex has moved on, that he is ill-equipped to serve as a caretaker, and that his life is in limbo. Unreliable, unstable, but hilarious and brutally honest, John's artistic sensibility and his job as a landscaper make his situation even more maddening. Wearing his wounded heart on his sleeve, he turns his life into a piece of performance art that involves late-night graffiti raids and car theft. He aims to illustrate how the forces of love, freedom and individuality can triumph over greed, conformity and corporatization. In the eyes of those around him his project is a failure, but for the reader it offers a dangerously veering joy ride.

The Heart of It All

Literature & Fiction

Courter, Justin

Literary

Owl Canyon Press

This novel tells of a young man's attraction and ultimate addiction to skunk musk, and the social difficulties he encounters as a result. He longs to find an isolated utopia where he can experience his addiction in peace, but he is thwarted by all, including a young woman who understands his skunk fetish because she has a fish fetish. "The skunk-obsessed narrator of Justin Courter's excellent, off-kilter love story, leads his lucky reader through a flare-lit labyrinth of unusual, and unusually rewarding, instances. This is fine, fierce writing: an auspicious debut." --Laird Hunt "Thoreau meets Timothy Leary in this outrageous and cautionary tale of what happens when two olfactory obsessions collide. An audacious debut." --Brian Evenson

Skunk: A Love Story

Humor & Satire

Omnidawn

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Books by Courter, Justin