The Smoke in Our Eyes

"Beyond painting the landscape so effectively, the author pays close attention to period details unique to the 1950s: the early days of television, the rotary phones, the music on the radio, the cars, folks’ healthy dose of fear about communism taking over the country, and the overt patriotism. The Smoke in Our Eyes is a love letter to simpler, bygone days when people’s sense of awe and wonder could be brought out more easily." -- Washington Independent Review of Books
“The excellent coming-of-age story is a change of pace for the legendary thriller author. Here, in this delicate but haunting noir, the young characters are beautifully crafted, the story is dramatic and utterly believable, and the time period is vividly evoked.” -- Booklist
"Though the threat of violence looms throughout the narrative, Grady delivers a spare tale of domestic tragedy, rich with nostalgia and memorable characters. Larry McMurty fans will enjoy themselves." 

  -- Publishers Weekly
"Small towns have long been the launch pads for great American literature, from To Kill A Mockingbird to The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.  It's time to welcome one more to the club.  The Smoke in Our Eyes is an ambitiously expansive and yet winsomely intimate portrait of a young boy growing up in Vernon, Montana, in the late 1950s, a town that, as his sister puts it, 'has you pegged the day you're born.' Nobody tells a story better than Grady. With humor and wisdom, with a marvelous eye for the visceral details that bring an entire world into being, Grady chronicles a boy—and a nation—on the threshold of great change. Neither will ever be the same again." * Julia Keller, winner of the Pulitzer Prize *
“This isn’t a coming-of-age story of a young boy, this is the coming-of-age story of a young nation, rendered on the canvas of rural America, circa 1959. A heart-rending meditation on how innocence becomes wisdom, how fate becomes freedom, and how nostalgia reveals truth. I loved this book!” * Jamie Ford, New York Times bestselling author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet *
"Grady pivots from the intrigue of The Condor to a powerful, heartfelt coming-of-age tale set in the Last Best Place. Young Lucas gets his first pair of glasses and a good, long look at the underbelly of his hometown. From first crushes and family ties to profound love and deep injustice, The Smoke in Our Eyes is a brilliant portrait of an era. This book feels like home." * Janet Skeslien Charles, national bestselling author of The Paris Library *
"The Smoke in Our Eyes gives us a propulsive coming-of-age novel with a heart as big as its Montana high plains setting." * Gwen Florio, award-winning Montana novelist and journalist *
"James Grady’s The Smoke In Our Eyes rounds up family, community, and the land like his rugged settler-cowhand forebearers… I savored the behaviors, concerns, speech patterns, accomplishments, failures, eccentricities, ids, egos, and the general feast of America and our place of origin in Smoke."

                      * Sidner Larson, PhD, author of Catch Colt, published poet, and law professor of Indigenous studies at the University of Arizona and Navaho Technical University *
Praise for James Grady

"A cinematic thriller racing through the heartland of our American now." * Stephen Hunter, Pulitzer Prize-winner *
“A cross-section of American types—visualize an updated version of Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims—whose actions, often enigmatic and ominously unsettling, are relayed in fast-moving, syncopated prose, each sentence like a knife-thrust.  It is a truth universally acknowledged that suspense novels set on trains can’t help be anything other than terrific." * Michael Dirda, The Washington Post *