The Flamer [Paperback]

All boys tinker with fire. Oby Brooks holes up in a backyard shed to experiment with napalm recipes. He has a hand in burning down his own house, twice. He can't help it: his very DNA seems made of TNT. Meanwhile, amidst the detonations, Oby's sexuality is up for grabs. Parents, mountain men, chemistry teachers, neighbors, and arson inspectors all try in their own quirky ways to usher Oby into adulthood with his fingers any eyelashes intact. In the end, the question is whether Oby's nature will be nurtured, or neutered. Oh, and, will he land a Nobel Prize?

One of the wisest, funniest, strangest novels Ive ever read, narrated by one of the most unique characters Ive had the pleasure of meeting in American fiction. I treasure this book.Christopher Coake, author of You Came Back; GRANTA Best Young American Novelist

&diabolically funny& Brainy and splendidly profane, Rogerss writing is incendiary and hypnotic. We watch with an arsonists glee as his boy genius lights the fuse of his own volatile adolescence. A sizzling debut.Claire Vaye Watkins, author of Battleborn & 2013 Story Prize winner

&a highly original and delightful debut&. Rogers writes with crisp precision about subjects as varied as science, the complex matters of the heart, and the Great Basin landscape.High Country News

The seamless transition the protagonist, Oby, makes & is written so phenomenally well that the reader finishes wondering when the hell it happened. [The books] readability lies with its wide cast of well-written characters&.characters that the reader will walk away remembering.On Fiction Writing

Like Harper Lee and Mark Twain, Ben Rogers has tapped into regional America to scribe a coming-of-age story that is universal in its truths. The Flamer debuts a fine new writer who understands his craft&but even better a writer who understands human nature.H. Lee Barnes, author of When We Walked Above the Clouds & Member of Nevada Writers Hall of Fame

& a wittyl3;