Charlie and Vivian parted ways after just four years of marriage. Too many problems, too many struggles, even though the love didn't quite die. When Charlie returns to Wisconsin 40 years later, he's not sure what he'll find. He is sure of one thing --- he must try to reconnect with Vivian to pick up the broken pieces of their past. But 40 years is a long time. It's 40 years of other relationships, 40 years of building new lives, and 40 years of long-held regrets, mistakes and painful secrets.

Cole, Bart and Teddy, the three principals of True Triangle Construction, are hired to finish a project for a mysteriously wealthy homeowner. The grand house is unlike anything they’ve worked on before, and they’re sure it’ll put their name on the map. But the owner is intent on having it built in a few months, an impossible task made irresistible by an exorbitant bonus. Up against the critical deadline and the threat of a harsh Wyoming winter, the trio will do anything to get the money, even if it means risking their lives…or each other’s.

Lyle Hovde is living a mostly content life in rural Wisconsin with his wife, Peg; daughter, Shiloh; and six-year-old grandson, Isaac. After a troubled adolescence and subsequent estrangement from her parents, Shiloh has finally come home. But in Shiloh’s absence, she has become deeply involved with an extremist church, and the devout pastor courting her is convinced that Isaac has the spiritual ability to heal the sick. While reckoning with his own faith --- or lack thereof --- Lyle soon finds himself torn between his unease about the church and his desire to keep his daughter and grandson in his life. But when the church’s radical belief system threatens Isaac’s safety, Lyle is forced to make a decision from which the family may not recover.

Camp Chippewa, 1962. Thirteen-year-old Nelson Doughty, a social outcast and an overachiever, is the Bugler, sounding the reveille proudly each morning. Yet this particular summer marks the beginning of an uncertain and tenuous friendship with a popular boy named Jonathan. Over the years, Nelson, irrevocably scarred from the Vietnam War, becomes Scoutmaster of Camp Chippewa, while Jonathan marries, divorces and turns his father’s business into a highly profitable company. And when something unthinkable happens at a camp get-together with Nelson as Scoutmaster and Jonathan’s teenage grandson and daughter-in-law as campers, the aftermath demonstrates the depths --- and the limits --- of Nelson’s selflessness and bravery.

Young couples gather to participate in an annual "chainsaw party," cutting down trees for firewood in anticipation of the winter. A group of men spend a weekend hunting for mushrooms in the wilderness where they grew up and where some still find themselves trapped. An aging environmentalist takes out his frustration and anger on a singular, unsuspecting target. Together, the 10 stories in Nickolas Butler’s collection evoke a landscape that will be instantly recognizable to anyone who has traveled the back roads and blue highways of America.

Hank, Leland, Kip and Ronny were all born and raised in the same Wisconsin town --- Little Wing --- and are now coming into their own (or not) as husbands and fathers. Seamlessly woven into their patchwork is Beth, whose presence among them --- both then and now --- fuels the kind of passion one comes to expect of lovesongs and rivalries. Now all four are home, in hopes of finding what could be real purchase in the world.

SHOTGUN LOVESONGS is that rare work of fiction that evokes a specific time and place yet movingly describes the universal human condition. It is, in short, a truly remarkable audiobook --- a novel that once listened to will never be forgotten.