Red Dog Farm: A Novel

An atmospheric, moving, and droll coming-of-age story about a young man's transformative year on his family's struggling Icelandic cattle farm as he falls in love, discovers a fondness for farming, and yearns to connect with his stoic father, who remains haunted by a tragic past.

Growing up on his family's cattle farm in western Iceland has given young Orri an appreciation for the beauty found in the mundanities of pastoral life. Unsure, however, whether he wants to make a life of farming himself, he has left his no-nonsense Lithuanian Jewish mother and his taciturn Pabbi, a native Icelander, to attend university in Reykjavík.

A survivor of the 1973 Eldfell volcanic eruption and a lifelong farmer, Pabbi is no stranger to cycles of life and death, growth and destruction. But hardscrabble life on a farm has long lost its charm, and Pabbi falls into a depression not long after Orri leaves for school. Orri, feeling adrift and aimless in his first year away, decides to return home and help Pabbi.

Over the next year, despite their conflicting attitudes, father and son run the farm together. Orri also experiences the pangs of early love after an unexpected meeting with Mihan, a young Filipino woman from Akureyri. Eventually, the relationship blossoms. By year's end, Orri must face the decision of whether he wants to-and should-return to university, and what a future with Mihan would hold, if she'll have him.