Friendswood: A Novel

"Texas is a huge, complicated state, and it’s sometimes a difficult one for authors to get right. Not so for René Steinke, whose Friendswood does a near-perfect job capturing the feel not just of the titular city but of southeast Texas as a whole. Steinke’s chronicle of the residents of a town dealing with — and denying — a recent environmental disaster is disturbing and thought-provoking, and one of the most interesting novels to be set in the Lone Star State in quite a while."