Everything Ravaged Everything Burned [Paperback]

'This is a collection that, for once, lives up to the hype. Watch out for Wells' -Sunday Times --Review

'His range is wide and his language impeccable, never strained or fussy' -New York Times

'Tower routinely brings combustible materials together ... and has fun watching them ignite' -Observer

'This is wonderful writing spiked with deliciously dark humour' -Psychologies

`Funny and moving; accomplished stuff' -Big Issue

'The prose is built on tough American foundations ... Each off-field exchange has a witty ring of truth' - The Times

'A funny, sad, rich triumph' - Financial Times

'Tower taps into what lies beneath, often comically. There are dazzling points of light in the darkness' - Independent on Sunday

'Hums with the vitality and sparkle of real lives lived' - Sunday Business Post

A man is booted out of his home after his wife discovers that the sweat-smudged footprint on the inside of his windscreen doesn't match her own. Teenage cousins, drugged by summer, meet with a reckoning in the woods. A boy runs off to the carnival after his stepfather bites him in a brawl. In the stories of Wells Tower, families fall apart and messily, hilariously try to reassemble themselves. His characters - marauding Vikings, washed-up entrepreneurs, and jobbing hacks on local papers - are adrift from the mainstream, confused by contemporary masculinity, angry and aimless. Combining electric prose with compassion and dark wit, this is a major debut.

Tower was born in Vancouver in 1973. He received a B.A. in anthropology and sociology from Wesleyan University and an M.F.A. in fiction writing from Columbia University. He is the recipient of The Paris Review Discovery Prize, a Pushcart Prize and a Henfield Foundation award. He lives in North Carolina.