BRADEN HEPNER
BRADEN HEPNER grew up in Cache Valley, Utah, near the Idaho border. His grandfather owned a small dairy farm, where he worked during childhood and adolescence. He took a job in general construction at the age of 15, and at 16 joined a masonry crew and tended hod for 2-3 years before learning how to lay brick–a trade he later practiced independently near the end of his undergraduate days in Idaho. Upon returning from an LDS mission, he enrolled in college, where he met his wife, Elizabeth. In 2007 he moved to Iowa City to attend the Writers’ Workshop. He lives now with his wife and two sons in Idaho. Pale Harvest is his first novel.
BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
PALE HARVEST
A Novel
Working a dying trade in a dead town, dairy farmer Jack Selvedge finds his life and existence stagnant. When Rebekah Rainsford moves back to town on the run from her father, her dark history consumes him. It soon becomes clear why girls like her don’t stay in towns like these, as elements of humanity in ruin culminate in tragedy. A deeply written and deeply felt story of love, depravity, and shattered ideals, Pale Harvest examines the loss of beauty, purity, and simplicity within the mindset of the rural American West.
“Hepner’s stunning debut novel is an homage to the barren landscape of the American West . . . a meditation on the nature of hope and self-determination, a sweeping elegy to a dying town and to the bond between blood and earth.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review)