By Robert Goolrick
The author of the #1 New York Times bestseller A Reliable Wife returns with a new novel about the dark side of passion set in mid-century America in a small Virginia town.
An attractive and enigmatic stranger—Charlie Beale, a loner recently home from the war in Europe—wanders into the town of Brownsburg, a sleepy village of only a few hundred people nestled in the valley of Virginia. He brings with him two suitcases: one contains all his worldly possessions, including a set of butcher’s knives; the other is full of money.
Charlie quickly finds a job at the local butcher shop and through his work there meets all the townspeople, most notably Sam Haislett, the five-year-old son of the shop’s owner, and Sylvan Glass, the beautiful, eccentric teenage bride of the town’s richest man. What no one anticipates is how the interaction of these three people will alter the town forever, and how the passion that flares between Charlie and Sylvan will mark young Sam for life.
Told through the eyes of Sam, now an older man looking back on that time, this much-anticipated second novel from Robert Goolrick is an exciting,erotically charged, and altogether unforgettable story of love gone terribly wrong in a place where once upon a time such things could happen.
You can buy Heading Out to Wonderful at Indiebound independent bookstores, Powell’s, Barnes & Noble, and Amazon.
About the author
In addition to A Reliable Wife, Robert Goolrick is the author of the acclaimed memoir The End of the World as We Know It. He lives in a small Virginia town.
