Shotgun Lovesongs

Book 7 of my 2019 Reading Challenge
read from January 14 - 18

Shotgun Lovesongs
by Nickolas Butler

Summary (via the book jacket)
published in 2014

Welcome to Little Wing. It's a place like hundreds of others, nothing special, really. But for four friends - all born and raised in this small Wisconsin town - it is home. And now they are men, coming into their own or struggling to do so.

One of them never left, still working the family farm that has been tilled for generations. But others felt the need to move on, with varying degrees of success. One trades commodities, another took to the rodeo circuit, and one of them even hit it big as a rock star. And then there's Beth, a woman who has meant something special in each of their lives.

Now all four are brought together for a wedding. Little Wing seems even smaller than before. While lifelong bonds are still strong, there are stresses - among the friends, between husbands and wives. There will be heartbreak, but there will also be hope, healing, even heroism as these memorable people learn the true meaning of adult friendship and love.

Seldom has the American heartland been so richly and accurately portrayed. Though the town may have changed, the one thing that hasn't is the beauty of the Wisconsin farmland, the lure of which, in Nickolas Butler's hands, emerges as a vibrant character in the story. Shotgun Lovesongs is that rare work of fiction that evokes a specific time and place yet movingly describes the universal human condition. It is, in short, a truly remarkable book - a novel that once read will never be forgotten.

My Opinion
5 stars

This is more of a book that I resonated with as an experience and can't really put into words why.  As a lifelong Midwesterner myself I recognized all of these characters and could tell through his writing that the author grew up around here too.  I was immediately absorbed with his descriptive writing and full-fledged characters (not easy when there were so many) and would definitely read him again.

I didn't love all the plot points, especially a situation near the end of the book that almost knocked it down to a high 4 for me but in the end I kept it a 5 star read.

A Few Quotes from the Book

"For all of our Middlewestern niceness, I realized that we, that I, could be every bit as cold as our longest season."

"Here, life unfurls with the seasons. Here, time unspools itself slowly, moments divided out like some truly decadent dessert that we savor - wedding, births, graduations, grand openings, funerals. Mostly, things stay the same."