PRAISE FOR SON OF A GUN:

"[A] spectacular memoir . . . calls to mind two others of the past decade: J. R. Moehringer's Tender Bar and Nick Flynn's Another Bull____ Night in Suck City. All three are about boys becoming men in a broken world. . . . [What] might have been . . . in the hands of a lesser writer, the book's main point . . . [is] amplified from a tale of personal loss and grief into a parable for our time and our nation. . . . If the brilliance of Son of a Gun lies in its restraint, its importance lies in the generosity of the author's insights."--The New York Times Book Review

"[A] gritty, enthralling new memoir . . . St. Germain has created a work of austere, luminous beauty. . . . In his understated, eloquent way, St. Germain makes you feel the heat, taste the dust, see those shimmering streets. By the end of the book, you know his mother, even though you never met her. And like the author, you will mourn her forever."--NPR

"If St. Germain had stopped at examining his mother's psycho-social risk factors and how her murder affected him, this would still be a fine, moving memoir. But it's his further probing--into the culture of guns, violence, and manhood that informed their lives in his hometown, Tombstone, Ariz.--that transforms the book, elevating the stakes from personal pain to larger, important questions of what ails our society."--The Boston Globe

"A visceral, compelling portrait of [St. Germain's] mother and the violent culture that claimed her."--Entertainment Weekly

"Emotionally raw and beautifully written . . . a book you won't soon forget."--BookPage

"Impossible to put down . . . Son of a Gun is a raw, compelling read that stays with you beyond the last page."--GQ

"A great, momentous undertaking . . . This book is brave, honest, savage, and tender all at once. It broke my heart, and I'm so grateful I've read it."--Jesmyn Ward

"There is a sort of gracefulness in the cadences, and a lovely control of rhythm in the sentences, which do justice to the themes of loss and love that are at the center of this memoir. There is also a level of coiled and accurately conveyed emotion, a careful way of telling truth, and an unsparing release of heartbreak."--Colm Tóibín

"From an incident of heartbreaking violence, Justin St. Germain has created a clear-eyed and deeply moving meditation on family, geography, and memory, and how difficult it is to find our place in any of them. Son of a Gun is an extraordinary memoir."--Kevin Powers, author of The Yellow Birds

"Taut . . . audacious . . . compelling . . . Admirably, St. Germain tries to understand how his young adulthood was shaped."--Kirkus Reviews