Trust Me - by Scott Nadelson (Paperback)

About the Book

"As a last-ditch effort to save his marriage, Lewis--an East Coast suburban Jew who has run from his roots--buys a cabin on a wild and scenic river in the Cascade foothills; after the marriage falls apart, he moves to the woods and makes the long commute every morning to Salem, the state capital, where he works a tedious government job. Skye stays with him on weekends, leaving behind her middle-school friends, her cellular service, her cat, and her mom in exchange for ancient trees and clear water and moss-covered rocks. In fifty-two vignettes-one for each week of the year-that alternate between Lewis's perspective and Skye's, the novel traces their days foraging for mushrooms and searching for newts, arguing over jigsaw puzzles and confronting menacing neighbors, hosting skeptical visitors and taking city jaunts, finding pleasure in small moments of wonder and coping with devastating loss. By turns comic and heartbreaking, Trust Me is a study of the uneasy bond between a hapless father and his precocious daughter, of their love for a complex and changing landscape, of the necessity and precariousness of the relationships and places we cherish most"--

Book Synopsis

Trust Me tells the story of a turbulent year in the life of Lewis Nelson and his daughter Skye, who spend their time together at the edge of a fragile wilderness in Western Oregon.

As a last-ditch effort to save his marriage, Lewis--an East Coast suburban Jew who has run from his roots--buys a cabin on a wild and scenic river in the Cascade foothills; after the marriage falls apart, he moves to the woods and makes the long commute every morning to Salem, the state capital, where he works a tedious government job. Skye stays with him on weekends, leaving behind her middle-school friends, her cellular service, her cat, and her mom in exchange for ancient trees and clear water and moss-covered rocks. In fifty-two vignettes--one for each week of the year--that alternate between Lewis's perspective and Skye's, the novel traces their days foraging for mushrooms and searching for newts, arguing over jigsaw puzzles and confronting menacing neighbors, hosting skeptical visitors and taking city jaunts, finding pleasure in small moments of wonder and coping with devastating loss. By turns comic and heartbreaking, Trust Me is a study of the uneasy bond between a hapless father and his precocious daughter, of their love for a complex and changing landscape, of the necessity and precariousness of the relationships and places we cherish most.

Review Quotes

Winner of the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, one of the oldest and most prestigious Jewish literary awards in the United States

"Nadelson successfully evokes the peacefulness and wonder of the wilderness setting. Thanks to the affecting family story at its core, this stands out among the recent spate of climate fiction."

--Publishers Weekly

"Scott Nadelson beautifully, movingly sketches the balance between turbulence and poise, wonder and boredom, bravery and vulnerability that is being twelve, or raising someone who is twelve, and perfectly captures the muddled marvel of feeling like a child, while also feeling like an adult, which is true here of both father and daughter and, as we read, maybe all of us."

--Laurie Frankel, author of One Two Three

"Scott Nadelson's Trust Me is, simply, one of the most affecting novels I've read in years. In the midst of busy days, the book waiting for me on my bedside shelf, I found myself missing these characters--how wise and wounded they are, how silly and confused, how fundamentally human. I was hoping for them. Trust Me is a book that will have you hoping for us all. Lewis and Skye and the river they share will long stay with me."

--Joe Wilkins, author of The Entire Sky and Fall Back Down When I Die

"Scott Nadelson has a remarkable ability to let his characters love and laugh and fumble and grow and burn and bleed right on the page. Alternating between the perspective of a recently divorced father and his teenage daughter, we follow two intertwined lives as they each awkwardly find their way. It's a gift to witness the humanity of this story. Trust me."

--Yuvi Zalkow, author of I Only Cry in Emoticons and A Brilliant Novel in the Works

"Trust Me is an exquisite novel: tender, funny, and wonderfully absorbing. Nadelson shows us a father and daughter marked by the seasons, pressed to redefine themselves in the world and with each other in luminous, spirited prose."

--Elizabeth McKenzie, author of The Dog of the North and The Portable Veblen

"Scott Nadelson's Trust Me is tender and impossibly wise, a soulful tapestry of fifty-two moving vignettes depicting the unbreakable yet eternally fraught bonds between fathers and teenage daughters. Watching Lewis and Skye circle one another amid the buffeting waves of adolescence, divorce, isolation, wildfires, and more, Nadelson reminds us (to every parent's chagrin) that the only constant is change. He is a compassionate, witty, and attentive observer of these fundamental familial ties."

--Mark Sarvas, author of Memento Park and Harry, Revised

About the Author

Scott Nadelson is the author of a novel, a memoir, and six collections of short fiction, most recently While It Lasts, recipient of the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence. His work has won an Oregon Book Award, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and the Reform Judaism Fiction Prize and has been published in venues such as Ploughshares, New England Review, Oregon Humanities, The Writer's Chronicle, and The

Best American Short Stories. He teaches at Willamette University, where he holds the Hallie Brown Ford Chair in Writing, and in the Rainier Writing Workshop MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University.