Many readers have their own Coalfield, a real-life town that’s also a stand-in for Small Town, U.S.A. The main questions they’re poking at: “How did you prevent your life from turning into something so boring that no one wanted to know about it? How did you make yourself special?” They eff around and find out (when their art takes on a menacing life of its own) that boring isn’t always bad, special isn’t always good, and secrets - like God - work in mysterious ways. “The edge is a shantytown filled with gold seekers, we are the new fugitives, and the law is skinny with hunger for us.” Inseparable for the season, Frankie and Zeke bond over their daddy issues and creative drive, then hatch a Banksy-like plan to cover their town in eerie guerrilla art that features one baffling phrase: When two teenagers - awkward, repressed wannabe writer Frankie and jittery, hermit-like aspiring illustrator Zeke - meet at a greased-watermelon competition at the Coalfield, Tennessee, public pool in the summer of 1996, they set in motion a kinship that informs the rest of their lives. Are you in or out? It’s a leading question, and it guides the course of Kevin Wilson’s fever dream of a new novel, Now Is Not the Time to Panic.
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