Clay Center

Phil Condon

Phil Condon is author of River Street: A Novella and Stories (Southern Methodist University Press, 1994). His stories have appeared in the Georgia Review, Sewanee Review, Manoa, New Letters, Shenandoah, Black Warrior Review, Epoch, and Prairie Schooner. A recipient of a creative writing fellowship from the NEA in 1993, he teaches environmental writing at the University of Montana and lives in Missoula with his wife, Celeste River. Clay Center is his first novel.

Reviews

Clay Center is a touching love story, a psychological study of alienation and grief, and a starting examination of that time in which the American dream was revealed to contain its own nightmare. Phil Condon's novel is unpretentious and honest, as clean and cold as the world in which his young protagonist struggled to express his simple affections and hold on, against enormous odds, to his heartfelt ideals.

—Valerie Martin, author of Mary Reilly and Property, 2003 Orange Prize Winner

First-novelist Condon, in low-key, heartfelt prose, delivers a near perfect portrait of what it was like to be young and adrift in the late '60s, capturing the easy camaraderie of longtime friends, their idealism, and also their confusion and desperation. Winner of the Faulkner Society Novel Award, this is a subtle, graceful look at the heroic struggle to find meaning in the face of chaos and despair.

—Booklist Starred Review

Phil Condon has written a pitch perfect portrayal of what it was like to be twenty years old in 1969. From the American heartland to the peace scene in California, to the anti-war protests in Chicago, Clay Center explores with astonishing clarity and grace the tumult and complexities that define a generation. Clay Center is an important and profoundly moving novel.

—Connie May Fowler, author of When Katie Wakes and Remembering Blue

Ordering Information

To purchase Clay Center by Phil Condon, please contact our distributor, University Press of New England toll free at 1-800-421-1561 or by fax at 1-603-448-9729. The book is also available online at UPNE, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other fine retailers.

To request a copy for review, please contact the Carnegie Mellon University Press Editorial Offices at (412) 268-2861 or by email at CarnegieMellonUniversityPress@gmail.com.