Set against the decline of the American industrial heartland, American Rust is the story of two unlikely high school friends, Isaac English, a spindly young prodigy, and Billy Poe, hulking high school football star, who have put off college and found themselves mired in their dying hometown. On the verge of Isaac’s escape, they are caught in a momentary act of incredible violence that changes their lives and further restricts the few options available to them.

Told by the narrators and those close to them, this is a beautiful portrait of two young men oppressed by the double burden of escaping the prison of their everyday hometown life, and their immaturity in the face of the decisions that will get them out. We watch them fumbling through, burying themselves deeper in their hopelessness with every misstep.

Meyer’s writing is sometimes lyrical in its loving depictions of rural Pennsylvania, itself too a parable of the story – of the hidden beauty trying to emerge from the world of post-industrial desolation.