Sunflower

Michael is a metalworker with a name for building good fences. He’s even known by some neighborhood kids as Mr. Fence Man. But he wants to be something more: an artist like his former business partner, Alex. An artist, like his girlfriend, Jess, wants him to be. The commissions are starting to come in, and along with steady work making fences, things are looking good. The only problem he has is with his closest neighbor, who won’t allow visitors to pass through a gate between their properties. This dispute becomes a fight and Michael, enraged, makes a wrong choice.Haunted by the result of his choice, Michael starts to fall apart: a death weighs down on him, exposing the weaknesses in the persona he was creating for himself, the weaknesses at the heart of him. Sunflower is a story about a man having a bad day and making one bad choice. But underneath that, it is also about his coming to terms with himself: who he is - and who he is not. Ultimately, Sunflower is about how we define ourselves as people, and how we seek to be what we are not.An extraordinary and beautiful novel.