---

A combat veteran Thad Broom can´t leave the hardened world of Afghanistan behind. His mother, April, is haunted by her own demons. Between them is Aiden McCall, loyal to both but unable to hold them together. On a meth-fueled journey to nowhere, they will either find the grit to overcome the darkness or be consumed by it. A powerful story about the inescapable weight of the past.

---

Critically acclaimed author David Joy, whose debut, Where All Light Tends to Go, was hailed as "a savagely moving novel that will likely become an important addition to the great body of Southern literature" (The Huffington Post), returns to the mountains of North Carolina with a powerful story about the inescapable weight of the past.

A combat veteran returned from war, Thad Broom can´t leave the hardened world of Afghanistan behind, nor can he forgive himself for what he saw there. His mother, April, is haunted by her own demons, a secret trauma she has carried for years. Between them is Aiden McCall, loyal to both but unable to hold them together. Connected by bonds of circumstance and duty, friendship and love, these three lives are blown apart when Aiden and Thad witness the accidental death of their drug dealer and a riot of dope and cash drops in their laps. On a meth-fueled journey to nowhere, they will either find the grit to overcome the darkness or be consumed by it.

---

Advance Praise for The Weight of This World

"Not a single word is wasted in The Weight of This World, a dark and violent literary page-turner that burns with a white hot intensity rarely found in fiction today. A perfectly executed novel, this is a book that will endure."-Donald Ray Pollock, author of The Heavenly Table

"David Joy´s The Weight of This World is a tale of exquisite grit. A fearless writer, Joy is willing to go to all the dark places, but his voice and his heart serve as such strong beacons that we´ll follow him and take our chances. Those chances pay off in a story that is as tense and harrowing as it is achingly tender. Don´t miss this book."-Megan Abbott, author of You Will Know Me

"The Weight of This World is a beautiful nightmare of lives battered by the forces of serendipity and inevitability. Of lives swirling down the drain in a haze of meth, abuse, blood, and, of all things, love."-Reed Farrel Coleman, New York Times-bestselling author of Where It HurtsPraise for Where All Light Tends to Go

"[A] remarkable first novel . . . This isn´t your ordinary coming-of-age novel, but with his bone-cutting insights into these men and the region that bred them, Joy makes it an extraordinarily intimate experience."-Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review

"A savagely moving novel that will likely become an important addition to the great body of Southern literature."-Huffington Post

"[An] accomplished debut . . . In Appalachia, a young outlaw, Jacob McNeely, struggles to escape what Faulkner called that "old fierce pull of blood," a violent meth-dealing father, the dark legacies of an unforgiving place and the terrible miseries it breeds. [A] beautiful, brutal book."-Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Bound to draw comparisons to Daniel Woodrell´s Winter´s Bone...[Joy´s] moments of poetic cognizance are the stuff of fine fiction, lyrical sweets that will keep readers turning pages...Where All Light Tends To Go is a book that discloses itself gradually, like a sunrise peeking over a distant mountain range...If [Joy´s next] novel is anything like his first, it´ll be worth the wait."-Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"This beautiful brutal book begins with despair but ends in defiance."-Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (Best of 2015)

"Joy´s grim but satisfying story of the McNeely family faithfully echoes the language and atmosphere of this largely lawless mountain culture . . . a story skillfully written."-Shelf Awareness (starred review)

---