The Discards

From the author of Cheap Land Colorado and National Book Critics Circle Award-winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Newjack, comes an inventive, moving, and at times funny debut novel about people who have been written off in a place filled with things seemingly not worth keeping.

Hidden among the acres of rusted cars, dilapidated trailers, carnival rides, and accumulated junk of L&M Salvage in Oklahoma, a small group of outsiders create something remarkably close to a home. Calling themselves the Discards— “the throwaways living among discarded stuff, the cards that can’t be played”— Delanor, Jupiter, Freddie D, Lizrd, and Sam manage to make use of what others have left behind, while also doing their best to look after themselves and one another.

Enter Thomas Gibbler who has inherited L&M Salvage and returns with grand plans to revive his parents’ junkyard. The Discards are now at risk, the boundary between the life they’ve made for themselves and the conventional world they largely abandoned suddenly becoming blurred.

But like the cards in a game of gin rummy, the discard pile can be picked up, turned over, and the cards played again.

Praise for Ted Conover:

“Conover’s approach isn’t so much about pinning people down as letting them reveal themselves. He’s such a wry and nimble writer that much of the time this works, yielding rounded portraits that are full of ambiguity, anguish and contradiction.”—The New York Times