Outside Man

Farmers don't believe in luck.

"... beyond Bozeman with four hundred dollars, a couple of fishing poles, and a suitcase stuffed with year-old work clothes, he was driving his car along the straight, flat highway stretching west from Spokane. It was about noon when he first saw Gainesville ..."

For Sam Lawrence, a drifting farmhand, a feeling of rootlessness and disconnection with people has always been the driving force of his lifestyle, convinced he isn't capable of being able to develop the sorts of relationships he sees others have, whether by way of family or society. Suddenly though, faced with the feeling he might want to set down roots within the rolling hills of the Palouse Country in Eastern Washington, he finds himself suddenly entangled in a power struggle between two brothers. It is the sort of situation he would have avoided at all costs in the past. But a new element has also come into his life, a person who has revealed to him that the person he is, is almost exactly the opposite of the one he thought he always was. And that things like friendship, appreciation, acceptance ... and even love ... are things he can acquire easily, by way of a simple change in how he looks at things. Unfortunately, this discovery will coincide with him having to make a terrible decision if he wants to find any happiness within what he has just found.

An absorbingly introspective study of human nature set against an inspiringly idyllic backdrop. -- Kirkus Reviews