The Hearts of Men by Nickolas Butler

The Hearts of Men by By Nickolas Butler

"What makes up a man's moral code, and how does he decide what's right and what's wrong? In this, Butler's first novel since the beloved Shotgun Lovesongs, a Boy Scout camp in northern Wisconsin serves as the setting for a story about two unlikely friends - perpetually bullied Nelson and popular, confident Jonathan - and the turns their lives take over the years.  Butler shows how everything from love to war to family trauma ultimately shapes the content of a man's heart.  Smart, touching and really satisfying."  -Recommended by Erika and Greg

The Hearts of Men: A Novel By Nickolas Butler Cover Image
$26.99
ISBN: 9780062469687
Availability: Unavailable
Published: Ecco - March 7th, 2017

Camp Chippewa, 1962. Nelson Doughty, age thirteen, social outcast and overachiever, is the Bugler, sounding the reveille proudly each morning. Yet this particular summer marks the beginning of an uncertain and tenuous friendship with a popular boy named Jonathan.

 

Over the years, Nelson, irrevocably scarred from the Vietnam War, becomes Scoutmaster of Camp Chippewa, while Jonathan marries, divorces, and turns his father's business into a highly profitable company. And when something unthinkable happens at a camp get-together with Nelson as Scoutmaster and Jonathan's teenage grandson and daughter-in-law as campers, the aftermath demonstrates the depths--and the limits--of Nelson's selflessness and bravery.

 

The Hearts of Men is a sweeping, panoramic novel about the slippery definitions of good and evil, family and fidelity, the challenges and rewards of lifelong friendships, the bounds of morality--and redemption.