The Standard Grand
"Nicorvo is a bracingly original writer and a joy to read." --Dennis Lehane"It seems possible that Nicorvo has ingested all the darkness of this life and now breathes fire." --Nick Flynn, author ofAnother Bullshit Night in Suck City"Nicorvo's muscular and energetic prose will stun readers with its poignancy, while providing a punch to the solar plexus." --Booklist (Starred Review)"A dash of Coetzee, a dram of Delillo, but mostly just the complicated compassion of Jay Nicorvo. The Standard Grand is a brutally beautiful novel." --Pam Houston, author of Contents May Have Shifted"A desperate masterpiece of a debut" that tells a huge-hearted American saga--of love, violence, war, conspiracy and the aftermath of them all. (Bonnie Jo Campbell)When an Army trucker goes AWOL before her third deployment, she ends up sleeping in Central Park. There, she meets a Vietnam vet and widower who inherited a tumbledown Borscht Belt resort. Converted into a halfway house for homeless veterans, the Standard--and its two thousand acres over the Marcellus Shale Formation--is coveted by a Houston-based multinational company. Toward what end, only a corporate executive knows.With three violent acts at its center--a mauling, a shooting, a mysterious death decades in the past--and set largely in the Catskills, The Standard Grand spans an epic year in the lives of its diverse cast: a female veteran protagonist, a Mesoamerican lesbian landman, a mercenary security contractor keeping secrets and seeking answers, a conspiratorial gang of combat vets fighting to get peaceably by, and a cougar--along with appearances by Sammy Davis, Jr. and Senator Al Franken. All of the characters--soldiers, civilians--struggle to discover that what matters most is not that they've caused no harm, but how they make amends for the harm they've caused.The Standard Grand confronts a glaring cultural omission: the absence of women in our war stories. Like the best of its characters--who aspire more to goodness than greatness--this American novel hopes to darn a hole or two in the frayed national fabric.