Can a life come apart and be rebuilt in one night? 19-year-old Richard Issych is about to find out. One friend is dead—murdered by another friend—and all Richard wants to do is get to the wake, come home, and start a new life. But for one life to begin another must end.

Since graduating high school the year before and not knowing how to live, or even if he wants to live, Richard has wandered into the graveyard shift at a local foundry, a hellish world of molten metal, rote work, and no prospects. Drawn into a downward spiral of motorcycle gangs and easy drugs, he finds himself on the cusp of a decision that will change his world forever.

Part road trip, part boomerang into past and back, part wrestling with the forces that make us and break us, Dusk and Ember is a hard truth coming-of-age tale in dark Americana. This night, Richard grabs hold and hangs on for the strangest car ride of his life with his oddball friends on their way to the wake.

Dusk and Ember is a prequel to There Are Reasons Noah Packed No Clothes, which Kirkus Reviews called “a confident, strongly voiced portrait of despair and the flickering light at the end of the tunnel.”