BLUE GRAFFITI

An aimless Wisconsin handyman comes to terms with his troubled past through new love.

At 29, Cash hasn’t lived a glamorous life: He’s a cigarette-smoking sometimes-painter who works odd jobs to make ends meet; an occasional writer who never followed the passion; and a burgeoning alcoholic who spends most of his free time at Jimmy’s Place, a local bar tended to by Saul, the son of his father’s best friend. He still lives in his childhood home, left to him after his mother died in a car accident and his father, broken by the loss, fled town without warning. There, Cash (whose surname we never learn) and his two best friends, Leon and Prince, spend countless hours reminiscing about the past and dreaming up schemes for the future, fantasizing about all the ways they might leave the small town of Johnston but never quite following through on any of them. It’s a town full of hardworking people, but Cash longs for more, “to have one beautiful moment of purpose.” The moment arrives when Rose, a young woman Cash doesn’t recognize (rare in Johnston), walks into Jimmy’s Place one evening and he’s instantly smitten. Cash learns that Rose is Saul’s sister, and the family connection feels fated. As Cash is pulled deeper into a relationship with Rose, he’s simultaneously pulled deeper into the history and legacy of Johnston, reflecting anew on the nature of the town and the people who inhabit it. Rose may represent a bright new chapter in Cash’s story, but to begin it Cash must first confront his own past, starting with the father who left Cash adrift in the same dead-end life he’d abandoned. Skogman’s debut is a love letter to bar-stool philosophizing and a tender portrait of small-town life with a simple but powerful message: There’s always something special about home.

Thoughtful, measured storytelling with moments of tremendous heart.