Painted Rocks - Parker Wilson
“You’re an animal. We’re all animals. Even you, son.”
Lewis has lost his dog Wolfie, his best friend in the world. Wearing her tag on a chain around his neck, Lewis is headed to the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore for a weekend of backpacking with three rowdy, aspiring Eagle Scouts and their Scoutmaster Ben, a struggling alcoholic. To survive the weekend, and the untethered hostility of Ben’s closeted son, Rhys, Lewis will have to hold onto his memories of Wolfie as tight as he can.
“Caught in that adolescent space between erotica and pain, the numb lip and the fist, we encounter a misfit troop of Scouts plunging with all their baggage into the scrub of Michigan's lakeside Upper Peninsula.”
Colin Gee, founder and editor of The Gorko Gazette
“Painted Rocks lays bare the rituals of masculinity that corrupt us, kill us, and keep us apart. Wilson's stunningly brutal prose is both gut-punch and heartstring-tug—the blood-suckle of mosquitos, the impact of fists on flesh, the dead weight of unrealized desire.”
K. Christopherson, author of Beast Country
“Painted Rocks is as brutal and sensitive as an adolescent boy's heart tuned to the erotic space where attraction and repulsion form the self. A tense and sensuous debut that shivers with subtle weirdness. Parker's prose flexes and relaxes on the page, blurring the boundaries between bodies, both human and nonhuman, entangling humans with the body of the land as it all competes for blood and love.”
Kyle E. Miller, author of the forthcoming novel, The Idiot's Garden
Release date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964932-13-2
80 pages
“You’re an animal. We’re all animals. Even you, son.”
Lewis has lost his dog Wolfie, his best friend in the world. Wearing her tag on a chain around his neck, Lewis is headed to the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore for a weekend of backpacking with three rowdy, aspiring Eagle Scouts and their Scoutmaster Ben, a struggling alcoholic. To survive the weekend, and the untethered hostility of Ben’s closeted son, Rhys, Lewis will have to hold onto his memories of Wolfie as tight as he can.
“Caught in that adolescent space between erotica and pain, the numb lip and the fist, we encounter a misfit troop of Scouts plunging with all their baggage into the scrub of Michigan's lakeside Upper Peninsula.”
Colin Gee, founder and editor of The Gorko Gazette
“Painted Rocks lays bare the rituals of masculinity that corrupt us, kill us, and keep us apart. Wilson's stunningly brutal prose is both gut-punch and heartstring-tug—the blood-suckle of mosquitos, the impact of fists on flesh, the dead weight of unrealized desire.”
K. Christopherson, author of Beast Country
“Painted Rocks is as brutal and sensitive as an adolescent boy's heart tuned to the erotic space where attraction and repulsion form the self. A tense and sensuous debut that shivers with subtle weirdness. Parker's prose flexes and relaxes on the page, blurring the boundaries between bodies, both human and nonhuman, entangling humans with the body of the land as it all competes for blood and love.”
Kyle E. Miller, author of the forthcoming novel, The Idiot's Garden
Release date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964932-13-2
80 pages
“You’re an animal. We’re all animals. Even you, son.”
Lewis has lost his dog Wolfie, his best friend in the world. Wearing her tag on a chain around his neck, Lewis is headed to the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore for a weekend of backpacking with three rowdy, aspiring Eagle Scouts and their Scoutmaster Ben, a struggling alcoholic. To survive the weekend, and the untethered hostility of Ben’s closeted son, Rhys, Lewis will have to hold onto his memories of Wolfie as tight as he can.
“Caught in that adolescent space between erotica and pain, the numb lip and the fist, we encounter a misfit troop of Scouts plunging with all their baggage into the scrub of Michigan's lakeside Upper Peninsula.”
Colin Gee, founder and editor of The Gorko Gazette
“Painted Rocks lays bare the rituals of masculinity that corrupt us, kill us, and keep us apart. Wilson's stunningly brutal prose is both gut-punch and heartstring-tug—the blood-suckle of mosquitos, the impact of fists on flesh, the dead weight of unrealized desire.”
K. Christopherson, author of Beast Country
“Painted Rocks is as brutal and sensitive as an adolescent boy's heart tuned to the erotic space where attraction and repulsion form the self. A tense and sensuous debut that shivers with subtle weirdness. Parker's prose flexes and relaxes on the page, blurring the boundaries between bodies, both human and nonhuman, entangling humans with the body of the land as it all competes for blood and love.”
Kyle E. Miller, author of the forthcoming novel, The Idiot's Garden
Release date: May 27, 2025
ISBN: 978-1-964932-13-2
80 pages