Eric Rickstad

Eric Rickstad

Eric Rickstad is a writer whose literary Gothic thrillers and short stories strip back the bucolic veneer of rural America and root around in its tragic underbelly. His first novel Reap was a New York Times Notable Book first published by Viking Penguin. His short stories and articles have appeared in many magazines. His newest novel, Speak! will be available soon. He holds an MFA from the University of Virginia where he was a Hoyns Fellow and Corse Fellow. He lives in Vermont with his wife and dog.

 
Reap: A Novel


Remarkable. Intoxicating. Arresting. Poetic.
A tale of macho violence and alternative horticulture in a creepy edge-of-the-world setting... puts readers in mind of Denis Johnson’s Already Dead... and Russell Banks’s unbeautiful losers. Rickstad takes his time setting his story in motion, but once he does it’s a powerfully bloody mess. The body count is high, and the violence persuasive. Most remarkable is the evocation of the territory, the gothic tangle of native forest and exotic cash crop that mirrors the characters’ claustrophobic inner landscapes [and] the grimly poetic images scattered throughout, like flashes of submerged lives never quite reeled in.   


Dangerous. Perilous. Complex.
A complex portrait of a group of people whose interlocking fates snap into place with gruesome repercussions and of a boy who stumbles unwittingly into adulthood like a bird dog into a wolf trap.
 


A bloody beauty of a debut. A dramatic reminder of the mystery and majesty of the wild places that exist in both man and nature. Reap resonates with unforgettable characters and over the top descriptions. [It] is far more than complex plot. It is characterization. It is nature and commerce. It illuminates worlds of darkness.


Harrowing. Absorbing. Unpredictable. Dangerous. By turns bucolic and eerie [Reap] probes the mysteries of growing as plants people and situations twist inexorably in unpredictable, dangerous directions. A progressively more harrowing, absorbing tale.