The Standard Grand

**One of the Brooklyn Rail's Best Books of 2017** "Nicorvo is a bracingly original writer and a joy to read." Dennis Lehane "A desperate masterpiece of a debut" that tells a huge-hearted American sagaof love, violence, war, conspiracy and the aftermath of them all." Bonnie Jo Campbell "Nicorvos 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 "It seems possible that Nicorvo has ingested all the darkness of this life and now breathes fire." Nick Flynn, author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City 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 Standardand its two thousand acres over the Marcellus Shale Formationis coveted by a Houston-based multinational company. Toward what end, only a corporate executive knows. With three violent acts at its centera mauling, a shooting, a mysterious death decades in the pastand 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 cougaralong with appearances by Sammy Davis, Jr. and Senator Al Franken.

All of the characterssoldiers, civiliansstruggle to discover that what matters most is not that theyve caused no harm, but how they make amends for the harm theyve caused. Jay Baron Nicorvo's The Standard Grand confronts a glaring cultural omission the absence of women in our war stories. Like the best of its characterswho aspire more to goodness than greatnessthis American novel hopes to darn a hole or two in the frayed national fabric.

BARON NICORVO lives on an old farm outside Battle Creek, MI, with his wife, Thisbe Nissen, their son, and a couple dozen chickens. His writing has appeared in Salon, Poets & Writers, and The Believer and has been featured on NPR and PBS NewsHour. Hes published a poetry collection, Deadbeat, and served as an editor at Ploughshares and at PEN America.