Going Nowhere Slow

Going Nowhere Slow is a razor-sharp, darkly comic coming-of-age novel about dead-end ambition, failed relationships, and the long, strange road to figuring yourself out. Thurston Ford is a drifting college dropout with a penchant for doodling, shrugging, and disappointing everyone who’s ever cared about him. When his gothic girlfriend Martha kicks him out, Thurston trades a life of ramen-fueled codependency for an ill-prepared cross-country trek into the American Nowhere. But Thurston is just one traveler. Hawkins creates a stunning cast: a tech CEO, a Midwestern ladies’ fellowship group, and a state succession movement all converging on one unsuspecting tourist town. Thurston is forced to confront his mediocrity, privilege, and the question he’s avoided his whole life: What if no one thinks about you? Both painfully funny and surprisingly tender, Going Nowhere Slow captures the awkward, aching stretch between adolescence and adulthood with biting wit and quirky honesty.