Debut novelist Adam O’Fallon Price, whose previously published stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Glimmer Train, EPOCH, and Narrative, arrives this summer with The Grand Tour (Doubleday; August 9, 2016; $26.95) — a cinematic, darkly comic road novel about two deeply flawed characters whose struggles with thwarted success, disappointment, regret, and the incessant fear of failure coincide during the world’s most catastrophic book tour.

When Richard Lazar, a faded, alcoholic author, experiences unlikely late-career success with a memoir about his experience in Vietnam, he’s sent out on the road to promote his book. At the first stop, he meets Vance Allerby, a young, aspiring writer, and his biggest fan.

They embark on a promotional tour through the western United States that becomes a disastrous crucible, testing Vance’s faith in art and Richard, and forcing Richard to face the wreckage of his former life, including his failed marriage to a woman he still loves and his failed relationship with an estranged daughter who may not love him any longer.

In The Grand Tour, Price imagines himself into the skin of one of the oddest literary couples located in American fiction in years.

Tracing their journey from eastern Washington and Portland through Northern California and all the way to NYC, readers will want to strangle Richard Lazar and smack some sense into Vance — but their misadventures and oddly-evolving relationship are both excruciatingly touching.

Price was born in Los Angeles and grew up in the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia and Knoxville, Tennessee. He received an MFA from Cornell University, where he taught writing. His fiction has appeared in Narrative Magazine, The Iowa Review, Glimmer Train, EPOCH, The Paris Review, and elsewhere. He lives with his wife in Chapel Hill, NC.

Price will be signing books at Malaprop’s Bookstore,

 55 Haywood St. Downtown Asheville on August 16, 7pm. 

Call (828) 254-6734