Walk Me to the Distance
Walk Me to the Distance by Percival Everett, published by Pan Macmillan on March 27, 2025, is a work that explores the complexities of human relationships against a backdrop of stark American landscapes. This edition spans 256 pages and is presented in English. The narrative follows David Larson, a Vietnam veteran who, after the loss of his family, embarks on a journey westward from Georgia. His travels lead him to the remote town of Slut’s Hole, Wyoming, where he encounters a unique household that includes a one-legged widow and her disabled son, alongside a Vietnamese girl he takes in.
Readers will find a blend of Southern Gothic elements and Western themes throughout the story, as Everett delves into the nuances of life in the American badlands. The book presents a vivid landscape marked by both humor and underlying violence, reflecting the struggles of its characters. With themes of cooking and regional identity woven into the narrative, Walk Me to the Distance offers a rich exploration of the human condition amid the challenges of a harsh environment.
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‘Everett has mastered the movement between unspeakable terror and knock out comedy’ – The New York Times
David Larson can never go home.
His parents are dead. His sister and her hippie husband, staunchly anti-war, won’t even have the newly returned Vietnam veteran in the house. So Larson takes his chances on the road, travelling west from Georgia until he breaks down in the nowhere town of Slut’s Hole, Wyoming.
There he finds lodging with Chloë Sixbury, a one-legged sexagenarian widow, and her disabled son. Their ersatz family is complete when Larson takes in Butch, a Vietnamese girl abandoned at the highway rest stop where he works, but at the edge of this tableau lingers the unmistakable spectre of violence.
Blending the grotesquerie of the Southern Gothic with the Western’s codes of frontier justice, in Walk Me to the Distance Percival Everett renders a vivid and haunting landscape of the American badlands, where cruelty is the lingua franca.
Part of the Picador Collection, a series celebrating fifty years of Picador books and showcasing the best of modern literature.
Read Percival’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel James in paperback now.
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