Note: this is the e-book, for the print version go here.

In his latest work of fiction, Locust House, San Diego-born author Adam Gnade writes about his homeland in the tradition of regionalists like Sherman Alexie and Willa Cather. Gnade’s California is a place of border clash, of a glimpse of stormy sea from a top coastal hills or rollercoasters, of ratty beach apartments and punk shows. A collaborative release by Three One G and Pioneers Press, this is a story that asks, “What does it mean to hold fast to your dreams, ethics, and beliefs while the whole world tries to tame you?”

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR ADAM GNADE'S LOCUST HOUSE

“Locust House is so dense, so angry, and so honest, and so everything that we need today to survive in the world. Adam Gnade is the kind of talent who will remind you how necessary it is to stay human, stay empathetic, stay true, stay punk. For that, I thank him.” –Szilvia Molnar, author of Soft Split

“Locust House is a love letter to a time: San Diego, the early 2000s, the moment in youth right before cynicism slips in. Like any true love letter, it accounts not just beauty and tenderness, but the dirty repercussions of love–the betrayals, the pain, the deaths.” –Juliet Escoria, author of Black Cloud

“Adam Gnade’s Locust House is a vast and eloquent document only he could tell. Full of life, loss, and a one of a kind ‘beyond’ that takes the reader through dimensions of humanity, sound and vision encapsulated in a tiny window of time never to be repeated again. A testament to Southern California’s ‘glory days’ of recklessness, abandon, and blistering underground music, Locust House burned in my hands until the end with fresh, unbridled joy.” –Eric Wood of Bastard Noise

"Locust House reads like James Joyce and E. Annie Proulx had a lovechild and dropped him into the punk scene of early ‘00s San Diego, and then 15 years later he wrote a novella. Adam Gnade has managed to pack more energy, story, and feeling into this novella than you will find in most full-length novels. It’s as though he’s written the literary equivalent of the 45-second songs he mentions in the book. It’ll fuck you up like the best music, and like the best music, it’ll haunt you long after you read the final sentence.” –Jessie Lynn McMains, author of the forthcoming What We Talk About When We Talk About Punk, Poet Laureate of Racine, Wisconsin

“There’s something so totally fucking intimate about a well-written book about incendiary events that the words just blow an IMAX experience away as a meaningless Hollywood effect. You’re not just viewing from a distance–you’re fucking in it, in it, in it. Adam recalls in one part the first time music did it for him, maaan, thanks for reminding me about how words can do it for me. Got lost in it, all of it!” -Martin Atkins of Ministry, Pigface, P.I.L.

“Locust House makes me want to call up all of my teenage punk friends to ask if they ever still listen to those same CDs. Locust House confirms that I already know the answer. I feel nostalgic. I feel hopeful, I felt everything at once when I read the words, ‘I wasn’t cool but I was free.'” –Lucy K. Shaw, author of The Motion, co-editor of the Shabby Dollhouse Reader

“We work so hard at trying to exist, subconsciously looking at each other to find a cool belief to identify with. Survival without a solid foundation is brutal. I envy this particular S.D. crew coming together through the most extreme music/chaos–total excitement, totally identified. I really wish I’d gone to the Locust House with the Blood Brothers, I remember being invited to go. Man … ” -Ross Robinson, music producer of Head Wound City, At the Drive-In, The Cure, Blood Brothers, and others

“Blink and it’s over. Hits like a plauge of locusts. Windmilling unabashedly between the extremes of confidence, spiraling doubt, blood, fire, loneliness, siblinghood, and self-righteousness; grandiose and earnest but too cool to be in the room and desperate to belong to something better at the same time. Wait, was I supposed to be talking about the bands or the book?” Julia Eff, author of Every Thug is a Lady: Adventures Without Gender

“Locust House eats the heart of Saturday Nite. Then worries that the meat was rancid, if it was meat at all? Forces itself to puke, and always fights for another taste. Adam grinds starry innocence against sinister abuses of trust, the tectonic shifting of once-close friends and other nicks of ordinary life shitty-ness to produce an honest work that shows what it loves and will make you feel, in a rare way, connected.” –John-Vincent Greco author of Torch Ballads and Death in a Rifle Garden

“Locust House could only have been written by someone who lived firsthand the ethos of the San Diego punk movement, someone who sweated and bled in the house party basements. Adam Gnade writes with the kind of passion and empathy that most writers take decades to achieve. His writing is somehow both youthful and wise, funny and sad. He tells stories about San Diego with the kind of love and nuance that only a native could have. His writing will lift you up then punch you in the gut, and you’ll thank him for it.” –Bart Schaneman, author of Someplace Else