- Book Topics
- Thriller
- Suspense
- Hockey
- Hydraulic Fracturing
- Goalie
- Hazing
- Toxic Masculinity
- High School Sports
- Midwest
- Classical Music
- Eugenics
- Environmental Activism
- Chess
- Heredity
- Blood Lines
Driftless Quintet
When high school hockey phenom (and gifted musician) Colton Vogler transfers to the town of Driftless to play out his senior year, he’s one step closer to becoming a professional goalie. But a disturbing hazing incident, an increasingly erratic host family, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding a car crash that paralyzed his predecessor on the team lead Colton to gradually suspect that things in Driftless are not as they seem.
- Book Topics
- Thriller
- Suspense
- Hockey
- Hydraulic Fracturing
- Goalie
- Hazing
- Toxic Masculinity
- High School Sports
- Midwest
- Classical Music
- Eugenics
- Environmental Activism
- Chess
- Heredity
- Blood Lines
Reviews and Comments
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An admirably strange and inventive debut novel. Driftless Quintet is about hockey the way End Zone was about football. What the pigskin was for DeLillo, the hockey puck is for Sacksteder: a petri dish full of American paranoia and poison, perfect for measuring our cultures of belligerence, masculinity, sports psychosis, conspiracy theorizing, white supremacy, and empire. Funny, fevered, and unclassifiable, Driftless Quintet perfects the hybrid genre it invents-coming-of-age, small-town conspiracy, postmodern hockey noir-and introduces Sacksteder, like his gumshoe goalie Colton Vogler, as a talent worth scouting.
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As a writer, Joe Sacksteder is always surprising me. With his language, his leaps of faith, his deep and confounding characters. Driftless Quintet is a novel full of these surprises, but it’s so, so much more. It’s thrilling, terrifying and heartwarming and human, a book that will reward multiple readings and ponderings until Sacksteder surprises us again.
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Eerie and brilliant, Joe Sacksteder’s Driftless Quintet captures young maleness on the razor edge between cruelty and creativity. This sinister midwestern wormhole will immerse and surprise you at every turn, from the hockey rink to the end of the world.