It’s 2013 and a jobless Graham Mercy has just returned home to Wilkes-Barre, PA, after graduating from Columbia University. With his country still mired in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, and with nothing better to do, Graham sets out to fulfill a family obligation by attending the weekend-long convention of a failing regional life-insurance co-op. Expecting nothing but tedium and a $600 stipend, Graham instead gets a surprise job offer he can neither accept nor decline, develops a sudden infatuation he can neither pursue nor ignore, and unwittingly enters into an absurd power struggle that could render him a pariah within his own family and ancestral community. Horizontal Rust, the debut novel by Ned Russin of Title Fight and Glitterer, is a story about trying to understand boredom, abstract expressionism, family, personal narratives, and Wilkes-Barre.
