Vexation Lullaby: A Novel [Paperback]

Winner of the 2017 Maine Literary Award for Fiction • One of Amazon's Best Books of the Month, April 2016

Justin Tussing rocks the rock novel. Vexation Lullaby is pure raw pleasure from start to finish. —Lily King, author of Euphoria

Peter Silver is a young doctor treading water in the wake of a breakup—his ex–girlfriend called him a mama's boy and his best friend considers him a homebody, a squanderer of adventure. But when he receives an unexpected request for a house call, he obliges, only to discover that his new patient is aging, chameleonic rock star Jimmy Cross. Soon Peter is compelled to join the mysteriously ailing celebrity, his band, and his entourage, on the road. The so–called first physician embedded in a rock tour, Peter is thrust into a way of life that embraces disorder and risk rather than order and discipline.

Trailing the band at every tour stop is Arthur Pennyman, Cross's number–one fan. Pennyman has not missed a performance in twenty years, sacrificing his family and job to chronicle every show on his website. Cross insists that being a fan is how we teach ourselves to love, and, in the end, Pennyman does learn. And when he hears a mythic, as–yet–unperformed song he starts to piece together the puzzle of Peter's role in Cross's past.An Amazon Editorial Best Book of April (Fiction and Literature)“If rock celebrities are projections of their fans' fears and desires, then what Justin Tussing has done in his second novel—about an enigmatic old–timer who bears traces of Dylan and Springsteen—is turn the projector around. With a perfect ear and dry tongue, Tussing nails the ragged star Jimmy Cross and his populist poetry, but his central subjects are two men who beclS~