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An atmospheric coming-of-age story about a young man's transformative year on his family's struggling Icelandic cattle farm as he falls in love, discovers the purpose he's been missing, and seeks to connect with his stoic father, who remains haunted by a tragic past.
Growing up on his family's cattle farm in western Iceland, young Orri has gained an appreciation for the beauty found in everyday things: the cavorting of a newborn calf, the return of birdsong after a long winter, the steadfast love of a good (or tolerably good) farm dog. But the outer world still beckons, so Orri leaves his no-nonsense Lithuanian Jewish mother and his taciturn father, Pabbi, to attend university in Reykjavík.
Pabbi is no stranger to cycles of life and death, growth and destruction. He is pursued by the memory of a volcanic eruption and its aftermath, and so many years of hardscrabble farming have left their mark. Jaded, and no longer able to find joy in his way of life, Pabbi falls into a depression soon after Orri goes away to school. Orri, feeling adrift and aimless at the end of his first semester, comes home.
For the first time, Pabbi allows Orri to help him run the farm. Despite their conflicting attitudes, Orri and Pabbi must learn to work together. Meanwhile, Orri meets a kindred spirit on the internet: Mihan, a part-time student. Over time—and countless texts and phone calls—their connection deepens. By year's end, Orri must decide whether he wants to—or should—return to university, and what a future with Mihan would hold, if she'll have him.
With his signature blend of humor and tenderness, Nathaniel Ian Miller's Red Dog Farm is about the bonds forged and tested between family, friends, and lovers—and the act of building a home, together.
"A cold-winded, gorgeous gust of a book, Red Dog Farm solidifies Nathaniel Ian Miller as one of my favorite writers around. At once raw and exquisite, the book examines the endless complexities of family, the line between contentment and longing, and what happens when you pull a thread of history only to find your future. Its rural Icelandic setting, as wildly beautiful as it is severe, is the perfect framework for a story whose characters simmer with love, even as they struggle to show it. Like any dormant volcano, it's only a matter of time. This is a book to cherish." ―David Arnold, New York Times bestselling author of Mosquitoland and The Electric Kingdom
"Nathaniel Ian Miller delivers another reverent, deeply moving study of character and place in Red Dog Farm, a novel wrought with staggering truth and grace. Painted in assured prose, vivid in tenderness and humor, each movement of the story feels like a gift of humanity. You'll emerge from the folds of this remote Icelandic farm as if transported from a sacred place where love has been hard-won, purchased with sweat and honor and enormous stores of emotional truth. Red Dog Farm is a book that will change you." ―Thao Thai, author of Banyan Moon
This information about Red Dog Farm was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Nathaniel Ian Miller, who holds an MFA in Creative Writing and MS in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana, is a former resident in the Arctic Circle Expeditionary Program. He has written for Virginia Quarterly Review, and for newspapers in Wisconsin, New Mexico, Montana, and Colorado, for which he received multiple Associated Press Awards. He lives with his family on a farm in central Vermont where he raises beef cattle.
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