“In magnificently stark and evocative prose, Rapture tells the story of a lonely youth who joins a tribe of lost boys led by an enigmatic veteran waiting for the end of the world.”
— Hannah Tinti
At sea in his new life after his parents’ divorce, 11-year-old Hank tries to distract himself by spying on a neighbor, a young man recently returned from Vietnam.
To Hank, Curt Lenhart is a figure of romance—a real-life war vet who drives a magnificent red T-Bird—but there is also something mysterious, possibly even sinister, about him. Hank becomes obsessed with Curt, filling his journal with clues. An apocalyptic passage from the Book of Revelation scrawled on a scrap of paper. An aerogramme from Vietnam exhorting Curt not to lose hope; he’s been “sent back to the world” to complete God’s mission.
Hank imagines a scene of Vietnam-style torture if he’s caught, but when it finally happens, Curt befriends him instead, and he eventually brings Hank in on the secret. Curt believes he has been chosen by God to fulfill a special role in the already-unfolding End Times. This faith sustained him in the war, but back in the world it is faltering, and he comes to believe that God has sent Hank to help him. Hank wants it to be true. He is starved for connection and a sense of belonging.
Soon a ragtag “cult” of latchkey boys has formed around Curt, with Hank as self-styled second in command. He’ll do anything to keep Curt’s affection, and so becomes a collaborator in shaping the messianic vision and an accomplice as they careen toward violence.
Winner of the Harvard Review Chapbook Prize
“It’s seemingly a very narrow focus, about a boy and his neighbor . . . but it’s also a story of our country, our values. It’s a story about the consequences of war, the consequences of being human, of being hurt, and of surviving.”
— Prize judge Lily King at the launch,
Woodberry Poetry Room, Harvard