Ovenman A Novel

Skateboarder, restaurant worker, and punk rocker wannabe, the antihero of Jeff Parker’s uproariously funny debut novel adds a new twist to the classic coming-of-age story. Our hero, When Thinfinger, is a ne’er-do-well with a slightly tarnished heart of gold, and relies on Post-it notes to help him make sense of the chaos and momentum of his life: a girlfriend who dreams he murders her, a long lost Biodad who writes letters filled with lies, a televised war that is over before it has even begun, and a robbery he can’t remember committing.

Jeff Parker’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in numerous publications, including Tin House, Ploughshares, Hobart, and Best American Nonrequired Reading 2006. For more than a decade he worked in the kitchens of Italian, Mexican, seafood, pizza, fast food, and bar-b-q restaurants. Currently, he teaches creative writing and hypermedia at Eastern Michigan University and is program director of the Summer Literary Seminars in St. Petersburg, Russia program. He lives in Ypsilanti, Michigan, and Toronto, Canada.