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Last Good Year
Hardcover
General FictionLiterary Fiction
Publisher: Sam Ramlatchan
Published: Jun 19 2026
Pages: 464
Weight: 1.61
Height: 1.31 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
A town at a crossroads. A community divided. A future no one can agree on.
For generations, Hollisford has been sustained by hard work, shared traditions, and the institutions that bind neighbors together. The paper mill still dominates the skyline. The local newspaper still chronicles the life of the town. Families gather under Friday night lights, neighbors greet one another by name, and the rhythms of daily life seem as permanent as the river that runs through it.
But beneath the familiar routines, change has already begun.
As economic uncertainty, demographic shifts, and growing political tensions reshape the community, long-standing assumptions about identity, belonging, and progress come under increasing strain. When a contentious mayoral campaign captures the frustrations of residents who feel left behind, old loyalties begin to fracture. Friends find themselves on opposite sides of widening divides. Institutions once taken for granted struggle to maintain public trust. The stories people tell themselves about their town-and about one another-become increasingly difficult to reconcile.
Through the lives of workers, journalists, teachers, business owners, public officials, and community leaders, The Last Good Year traces the hopes, fears, and ambitions of ordinary people confronting extraordinary change. As competing visions of Hollisford's future collide, the town becomes a microcosm of broader questions facing communities across America: What holds a society together when shared assumptions begin to disappear? Can democratic institutions withstand growing polarization? And what happens when neighbors can no longer agree on the reality they inhabit?
Richly drawn and deeply human, The Last Good Year is a sweeping literary novel about civic life, social change, and the enduring search for meaning and belonging. Exploring themes of community, economic transition, political conflict, local journalism, public trust, and the fragile bonds that connect people to place, it offers a thoughtful and timely portrait of a town struggling to define its future while holding on to its past.
At once intimate and expansive, The Last Good Year examines the forces reshaping small-town America and asks whether a community can endure when its people no longer share the same understanding of reality.
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