Check out the debut coming-of-age novel that Gauraa Shekhar of Maudlin House says “occupies an important space in the psyche of American fiction,” with prose author Zach MacDonald calls “eye-opening and powerful” and says “showed the mind of a true humanist at work.”
Available here through IndieBound, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and more, both paperback and ebook.
Spanning the late 90s to the 2010s, HERE’S WALDO is a sprawling, tragicomic novel that tracks the story of Waldo Collins, a nerdy kid born in a torn-up town in the shadow of Chicago–unincorporated Des Plaines, IL. It’s a story about what it was like to come of age as the new millennium dawned with all its irrevocable changes. A story about the family bonds we’re born with and those we create along the way, and about using humor to find light in the dark. About generational trauma and the continuation (or completion) of cycles of violence. It’s here we follow Waldo from age eight to twenty-four as he figures out his place in the world, leaves his hometown to become a writer, and ultimately comes back to face everything (and everyone) he left behind. Here’s a story of loss, love, grief, guilt, and a search for meaning. Here’s Waldo.
Liza Olson 