Also the 2022 American Fiction Award winner
“An absorbing blue-collar meditation on marriage and meaning at midlife. A coming-of-age story, but that age just happens to be 55. We’ve all been there, or soon will be.”
JAMIE FORD, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“It’s a generous, bighearted look at relationships—romantic and otherwise—laced with sly humor and keen insights, and one hell of a payoff at the end. Lancaster’s best yet.”
GWEN FLORIO, author of Best Laid Plans and the upcoming The Truth of it All
“Craig Lancaster’s latest novel, And It Will Be a Beautiful Life, is full of just that: life. Its tangles and complications, its ruts and wrecks, its lights and losses—and yes, its beauties.”
JOE WILKINS, author of Fall Back Down When I Die and When We Were Birds
“Among Craig Lancaster’s gifts, I’ve come to appreciate most his ability to take the mundane and elevate it to the level of art; how he can spin quotidian threads into such colorful, surprising patterns; and, in the case of And It Will Be a Beautiful Life, how he can chase a pig through an ordinary life and find, along the way, such extraordinary seams of beauty, friendship, love, regret, tragedy, and triumph. You’ve really got to read this book.”
ALLEN MORRIS JONES, author of Sweeney on the Rocks and A Bloom of Bones
“The adventures of Max Wendt, criss-crossing the country and his life, goaded on by a strange new friend, are heartbreaking, funny, well-written, and entirely human.”
JAMIE HARRISON, author of The Center of Everything and The Widow Nash
“Lancaster’s great achievement is to pull us into Max’s world and make us his ally, even when we want to take him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. The key is in the title’s verb. Life, indeed, will be beautiful, but Max understands that only when he sees it in the lives of other people around him.”
LARRY BAKER, author of A Good Man
JAMIE FORD, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
“It’s a generous, bighearted look at relationships—romantic and otherwise—laced with sly humor and keen insights, and one hell of a payoff at the end. Lancaster’s best yet.”
GWEN FLORIO, author of Best Laid Plans and the upcoming The Truth of it All
“Craig Lancaster’s latest novel, And It Will Be a Beautiful Life, is full of just that: life. Its tangles and complications, its ruts and wrecks, its lights and losses—and yes, its beauties.”
JOE WILKINS, author of Fall Back Down When I Die and When We Were Birds
“Among Craig Lancaster’s gifts, I’ve come to appreciate most his ability to take the mundane and elevate it to the level of art; how he can spin quotidian threads into such colorful, surprising patterns; and, in the case of And It Will Be a Beautiful Life, how he can chase a pig through an ordinary life and find, along the way, such extraordinary seams of beauty, friendship, love, regret, tragedy, and triumph. You’ve really got to read this book.”
ALLEN MORRIS JONES, author of Sweeney on the Rocks and A Bloom of Bones
“The adventures of Max Wendt, criss-crossing the country and his life, goaded on by a strange new friend, are heartbreaking, funny, well-written, and entirely human.”
JAMIE HARRISON, author of The Center of Everything and The Widow Nash
“Lancaster’s great achievement is to pull us into Max’s world and make us his ally, even when we want to take him by the shoulders and shake some sense into him. The key is in the title’s verb. Life, indeed, will be beautiful, but Max understands that only when he sees it in the lives of other people around him.”
LARRY BAKER, author of A Good Man
If you like what you see here, please consider a donation (one-time or ongoing, your choice, there's gratitude for everything/anything). It will be used to keep the website aloft, supplies, hardware/software. The necessities that keep a working writer going. Thank you.