"Alton delves deeply into the dark and desolate side of adolescence where the lost boys and girls—the outsiders—endure the emptiness of existing, wanting so much to fill the void, but not knowing how. Bill is a 21st Century Holden Caulfield." —Laurie Gray, author, Maybe I Will, Just Myrto and Summer Sanctuary
"Flesh and Bone captures the reader with its beautiful prose and haunting imagery. I felt like I was let into Bill's life, privy to his heart-breaking journey. Like him, I was scraped raw by his struggle." —Margaret Gelbwasser, author, Pieces of Us and Inconvenient
"Conventional wisdom says a book is great when the reader says, 'I couldn’t put it down.' You will put this book down. And you will pick it back up. Again and again. In my days as a therapist Flesh and Bone would have been on my bookshelf labeled 'Truth.'" —Chris Crutcher, author, Whale Talk, Deadline, and Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes
“In a style that manages to be both stark and lyrical, Flesh and Bone is an unflinching portrait of one young man’s pain, desire and search for self.” —Julia Watts, author, Secret City and Finding H.F.
"Elegantly lyrical and compelling, Alton's Flesh and Bone gives us a teenaged narrator who is coming to understand the heartbreaking weight of the world." —Toby Emert Ph.D., associate professor, Depart of English, Agnes Scott College
"Alton’s brief, nuanced vignettes set a steady pace . . . Bill is lonely, sad, shallow, and detached, but his redeeming characteristic is that he refuses to intellectualize his misery. Mature, empathetic readers will cling to the hope that Bill’s salvation might come eventually with self-acceptance." —Gail Bush, Booklist
"Told in a series of short vignettes, this raw and heart-wrenching novel illuminates how loneliness can exacerbate depression and how while compassion may not always help, it can reveal the start of the path toward healing." —Foreword Reviews
"I cannot emphasize how powerful this book is. The prose here is lush and gorgeous as it is lyrical and really quite stark. It is rare to have a book of such power but then it has something important to say." —Amos Lassen, reviewsbyamoslassen.com
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
