Szarotka- a Novel (American Buffalo Books 2024)
As a boy, Spider’s life changes forever when he is sexually assaulted by three high school girls during a family trip to the Jersey Shore. Since then, Spider has navigated the peaks and valleys of his life while carrying the weight of his past trauma—alone, always alone.
In his hometown Chicago, Spider brawls with Detroit Lions fans and smokes darts with the homeless, has messy hookups on rooftops and drives in fast cars with Tommy Northside. Throughout, Spider stumbles closer and closer to the edge. When he finally seems to find love, he pushes it away.
After the end of his marriage, Spider surrenders to a dead-end factory job, where he reflects on the strange and violent images that haunt his dreams and waking memories. His mother, a Polish immigrant, is the only person who can still see the potential he can’t seem to actualize. To her, he remains a szarotka, a beautiful mountain flower.
Playing with the dream-like montage of human memory, Adam J. Galanski-De León’s debut novel explores how the past, present, and future bleed together to form the self. Through the second-person mosaic of Spider’s personal history, Szarotka searches for meaning in the darkest moments of our lives.
“Adam J. Galanski-De León’s Szarotka has carved a deep and permanent space in my imagination. From the terrifying mysteries of childhood to the booze-fueled wreckage of bad jobs and ruined love, Galanski-De León packs this novel with a sweeping range of the human experience that is unified by both a gritty vision and lyrically resonant tenderness. The result is achingly unforgettable, hands-down the most vibrant work of fiction I’ve read in years. This book has an entire galaxy of wise things to tell us, so we better listen up.”
— Patrick Michael Finn, author of A Place for Snakes to Breed
“Szarotka is a harrowing coming of age story that pushes against the crumbling factories and dim-lit bars of South Side Chicago. With the last of its strength, the South Side pushes back—through a vivid, unforgettable cast of scarred survivors who alternately serve as pathfinders or obstacles in one boy’s heartsick journey to adulthood. This is a remarkable portrayal of the damaged generation left to fight for their lives in the receding shadows of a once-vibrant migrant community. More directly, it is a powerful portrait of a fatherless youth finding within himself the courage, the perseverence and the navigation skills to survive in a rapidly-changing world.”
— Frank Haberle, author of Downlanders
“Despairing, electric, transcendent, true.”
— Emma Smith-Stevens, author of The Australian