AWP Award Series in the Novel

Judge: Jim Shepard

Follow four friends as they move from The Brady Bunch to
Seinfeld, from junior high to middle management. There is Quint, whose
rebellion frays into self-destruction; Slow, who struggles to become the
world’s first teenage father figure; Chimes, who fears losing his
friends while picking up a 7-10 split; and Barb who escapes the
conformity of Minnisapa only to find herself returning by dark of night.
You will feel as if you’ve always lived in Minnisapa, Minnesota.
And you will never underestimate nice kids from the Midwest again.

"Merit Badges lays out for the reader an entire, if
circumscribed, world, in all of its limitations and surprising
possibilities, rendered with a heartening intelligence and tenderness
and wit— ‘The weather was like me, only more so. The weather needed some
counseling’ —and in so doing reminds us of Simone Weil’s understanding
that attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."

—Jim Shepard, from the judge’s citation

"Merit Badges is hilarious, painful, lovely, nostalgic,
generous and true. Kevin Fenton creates an unforgettable group of
characters, in whose lives and thoughts and actions readers will often
recognize themselves. This is a very funny, very moving, and wonderful
book."

—Julie Schumacher,
author of The Body is Water

"Kevin Fenton’s Minnisapa is a place to rival any in fiction, so
skillfully sculpted that you put down the book (reluctantly, when you
must) sure you’ve lived there your entire life. Fenton’s vision of the
world is tender and true; his characters and their voices are
unforgettable. By turns incantatory and matter-of-fact, philosophical
and funny, Merit Badges is a thrilling debut."

—Amy Shearn,
author of How Far Is The Ocean from Here

"In Merit Badges, Kevin Fenton welcomes his lucky
readers to Minnisapa, Minnesota, on the Mississippi banks where, amidst
the confusions of the last quarter of the 20th century, the hills knelt
like buffaloes, public niceness was an art form and the winter air was a
psychopath. Blending narrative at once hilarious and wrenching with
phrases that send both our senses and our intellects dancing, Fenton
traces the struggle to acquire wisdom and love in a vivid collection of
characters—for whom being a ‘dube’ is the great public anxiety and
desperation the great private menace. Here is literary art working,
without flaw, at a high level of affirmation and intelligence."

—Tom McBride,
co-author of "Beloit College Mindset List"