The Badlands Saloon — Jonathan Twingley

A one-of-a-kind, fully illustrated debut novel about a young man's restless and lifechanging summer spent in a small North Dakota tourist town, The Badlands Saloon is a loving meditation on that time in life when you don't so much unfold the map as sit down and start to draw it.

Oliver Clay is a dreamer, content wherever he is as long as he has his sketchpad, paints and brushes. After a year in New York City attending art school, he escapes to the wide-open oasis of North Dakota. Ollie's home-away-from-home is the Badlands Saloon, the local watering hole. There he meets Willie Beck, a hyperactive old-timer who doesn't seem to talk so much as explode into speech; Jimmy Threepence, who likes to sing old English songs at the top of his lungs; Smoochie, a convicted murderer and Lacy, a Native American woman with an intoxicating free spirit. Though Ollie spends his nights in the bar, he spends his days riding his bike through the local hills and sketching the tourists.

Featuring eye-catching, full-color illustrations that bring this novel's landscape and characters to life, The Badlands Saloon is a unique paean to America.