by Phil LaMarche (Author)
American Youth is a controlled, essential, and powerful tale of a teenager in southern New England who is confronted by a terrible moral dilemma following a firearms accident in his home. This tragedy earns him the admiration of a sinister gang of boys at his school and a girl associated with them. Set in a town riven by social and ideological tensions-an old rural culture in conflict with newcomers-this is a classic portrait of a young man struggling with the idea of identity and responsibility in an America ill at ease with itself.
Author Biography
Phil LaMarche was a writing fellow in the Syracuse University graduate creative writing program. He was awarded the Ivan Klíma Fellowship in fiction in Prague and a Summer Literary Seminars fellowship in St. Petersburg, Russia. His story "In the Tradition of My Family," published in the spring 2005 edition of Ninth Letter and the 2005 Robert Olen Butler Fiction Prize Stories anthology, has been made into a film by orLater Productions. He lives in central New York state.