lives have led them.”
—Northern Virginia Magazine
“I recommend you read every single thing Rebecca Kauffman writes—start with this beautiful novel, and start now.”
—julie buntin, author of Marlena
“Kauffman’s prose is restrained in a way that causes it to actually vibrate in places, and her details are so richly observed they feel like gems, impossible things mined from deep under the earth. Funny, raw, and deeply elegant, The Gunners is ultimately a meditation on friendship, that least examined, most mysterious form of love, perhaps more sacred for its incompleteness, for the ways we can never fool ourselves completely into believing we truly know one another.”
—rufi thorpe, author of Dear Fang, with Love and The Girls from Corona del Mar
“The Gunners explores what it means to have people crawl into your heart and settle in for a lifetime. In this lovely, truthful novel of six people who have been friends since childhood, Rebecca Kauffman strips enduring love of all its usual romantic costumery, and shows us how it actually works.”
—martha woodroof, author of Small Blessings
“I inhaled The Gunners in a single sitting because I couldn’t stand to be away from it once I started it. Rebecca Kauffman’s brilliantly rendered story of six childhood friends tells the hard truth about human love—what it seems to be from far away, and what it really is up close—boldly, with compassion and warmth and humor.”
—kayla rae whitaker, author of The Animators
“Perceptive, funny, and endearing . . . Reminiscent of The Big Chill and St. Elmo’s Fire, this remarkable novel is just as satisfying and provides readers with an entire cast of characters who will feel like old friends upon finishing.”
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Kauffman has created vivid and compelling characters struggling with what is in some ways the most universal dilemma: how to grow up. Mikey especially is mature and thoughtful but not at all precious; and the boisterous, hilarious Alice is charming despite her best efforts to behave otherwise. In fluid prose, Kauffman lays bare the lessons of youth and truth. A layered and loving bildungsroman of friendship.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“Neither dark nor despairing, this work admirably expresses the satisfying comfort derived from the survival of such long-term friendships even as it evokes sadness about the losses and challenges that come with transitioning to adulthood. A successful sophomore effort after Kauffman’s well-received first novel, Another Place You’ve Never Been.”
—Library Journal
“A little bit like The Big Chill, Kauffman’s (Another Place You’ve Never Been, 2016) quiet and deep second novel reconciles the responsibilities we carry and the secrets we keep with the outsize pleasure of being known and loved by a chosen family.”
—Booklist
“Kauffman is back with a book that doesn’t disappoint, and manages to avoid the hackneyed tropes that many books about friendship fall back on . . . Friendship is its own kind of love, and Kauffman captures the messiness of long friendships that span years, along with reconciling past histories, in such a way that feels new.”
—Heard Tell
“Nostalgic, gracious, and tenderhearted, The Gunners is a welcome addition to the growing arena of books celebrating the beauty of friendship.”
—Fathom
THE GUNNERS
Copyright © 2018 by Rebecca Kauffman
First paperback edition: 2019
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright
Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of
brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are
the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance
to actual events is unintended and entirely coincidental.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover as follows:
Names: Kauffman, Rebecca, author.
Title: The Gunners : a novel / Rebecca Kauffman.
Description: Berkeley, CA : Counterpoint Press, [2018]
Identifiers: LCCN 2017040045 | ISBN 9781619029897 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Self-actualization (Psychology)—Fiction. | Interpersonal
relations—Fiction. | Self-realization—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3611.A82325 G86 2018 | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017040045
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-64009-194-8
Cover design by Nicole Caputo
Book design by Wah-Ming Chang
COUNTERPOINT
2560 Ninth Street, Suite 318
Berkeley, CA 94710
Printed in the United States of America
Distributed by Publishers Group West
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
For George
For we live with those retrievals from childhood that coalesce and echo throughout our lives, the way shattered pieces of glass in a kaleidoscope reappear in new forms and are songlike in their refrains and rhymes, making up a single monologue. We live
permanently in the recurrence of our own stories, whatever story we tell.
michael ondaatje, Divisadero
Chapter 1
Mikey Callahan discovered something about himself when he was six years old.
Students from his first-grade class were taken one at a time from the classroom and ushered to the gymnasium for standard
