About this item
"One of the bravest, most bracing novels I've read in years." --Ben Fountain, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime WalkJessup's stepfather gave him almost everything good in his life--a sober mother, a sister, a sense of home, and the game of football. But during the years that David John spent in prison for his part in a brutal hate crime, Jessup came to realize that his stepfather is also a source of lethal poison for his family. Now it's Jessup's senior year, and all he wants to do is lay low until he can accept one of the football scholarships that will be his ticket out of town. So when his stepfather is released from prison, Jessup is faced with an impossible choice: condemn the man who saved his family or accept his part in his family's legacy of bigotry. Before he can choose a side, Jessup will cause a terrible accident and cover it up--a mistake with the power to ruin them all.Told with relentless honesty and a ferocious gaze directed at contemporary America's darkest corners, Copperhead vibrates with the energy released by football tackles and car crashes and asks uncomfortable questions about the price we pay--and the mistakes we'll repeat--when we live under the weight of a history we've yet to reckon with. Alexi Zentner unspools the story of boys who think they're men and of the entrenched thinking behind a split-second decision, and asks whether hatred, prejudice, and violence can ever be unlearned.
About the Author
Alexi Zentner is the author of the novels The Lobster Kings (forthcoming May 2014) and Touch. He is published in the United States by W. W. Norton & Company, and in Canada by Knopf Canada. Touch has been published or is forthcoming in a dozen countries and ten languages, and The Lobster Kings will be published in at least five counties and four languages. The CBC has named Alexi as one of 12 Writers to Watch - "the future of this country's literature" - and one of six "fresh voices" for 2011. Touch was named one of the "best books" of 2011 from The National Post, Kobo, and Amazon. ca, and singled out for year-end praise by The Globe & Mail. Touch was shortlisted for The 2011 Governor General??s Literary Award, The Center for Fiction??s 2011 Flahery-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the 2012 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and the 2011 Amazon. ca First Novel Award, and longlisted for the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Alexi??s fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Atlantic Monthly, Narrative Magazine, Tin House, Glimmer Train, The Southern Review, The Walrus, and many other publications. He is the winner of both the O. Henry Prize (jury favorite) and the Narrative Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Best American Short Stories and the Pushcart Prize. Alexi is an Assistant Professor at Binghamton University and a faculty member in the Sierra Nevada College low residency MFA program. Alexi has also taught creative writing at Cornell University, where he received his MFA, in the Brooklyn College MFA program, and at the Rutgers-Camden Writers' Conference, and has been a teaching fellow at the Bread Loaf and Wesleyan University writing conferences. Alexi Zentner was born and raised in Kitchener, Ontario, and currently lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife and two daughters. He holds both Canadian and American citizenship.
