Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder

Nichols’] sentences repeat and sit inside each other as a sort of Greek chorus that resonates through the book.” —Chicago Sun-Times “Nichols pulls the readers in . . . with breathtaking immediacy. . . . Off We Go Into the Wild Blue Yonder is both original and haunting.” —Minneapolis Star Tribune “Nichols handles beautifully the hidden meanings in old family tales heard a hundred times. . . . The novel often reads like a piece of music that is wonderfully original.” —Publishers Weekly “A dramatically off-kilter debut novel about wars and the men who fight them. . . . We see the Bombardier, an elderly Rotarian and former mayor of a small Midwestern town, rediscovering his youthful memories. His grandson’s bewilderment over what to do about the 9/11 attacks highlights the differences between then and now. There’s a lot of meaty material here.” —Kirkus “Travis Nichols locates the story in history, the pistol in epistolary. This is crushingly great, altogether original debut that reads like an incantation. I dare you to stop reading.” —Ed Park “This is a beautiful crackpot’s history of America. Travis Nichols takes us on a godly road trip through tobacco, love, and Boom Boom, landing us profoundly still at the world’s loneliest tourist trap. It’s a curious animal version of all those ‘I was looking for’ books because here the animal (the writing) actually changes when it reaches its destination. And happily Off We Go is also a book about a man loving women: ‘A toast,’ I say finally, ‘to the mother’s side.’” —Eileen Myles