J.C. Myers’ spirited first novel, Junkyard at No Town, captures rural Vermont’s land, language, and culture in outrageous and vernacular-rich dialogue, combined with crazy and splendid plot twists and descriptions. You’ll find yourself breathless, sometimes wide-eyed, and sometimes laughing, as you follow young Jules’ initiation, fresh out of college in the early 80s, seeking a life far from his Westchester upbringing. He buys a junkyard in the rural Vermont village of Iraton—right on the edge of No Town.
Deep-rooted mysteries link incongruous neighbors and illicit livelihoods, impossible loves and unlikely devotions and violent characters — a house burns, water mysteriously flows and disappears, and people, too, change course, ignite, vanish or die. Readers will long remember the wild, haunting comedy of Jules, Butchy Guyette, Maddy and Byron Peas, Lutheria Tupper, Copeland DeMassey and Aunt Martha, whose intertwined and braided tales reveal Junkyard at No Town’s vulnerable secrets, its sins and its virtues — and our own.
