Nickolas Butler

press release: The Hearts of Men is an evocative, decades-spanning look at intertwining friendships and families that explores the slippery definitions of fidelity, morality, and trust—all played out against a backdrop of a venerable Boy Scout camp in the Wisconsin woods. It begins at Camp Chippewa in 1962. Thirteen-year-old Nelson Doughty, the camp bugler, is at once an overachiever and social outcast. This summer, however, launches a tenuous friendship with a popular boy named Jonathan. Years later, Nelson—irrevocably scarred from the Vietnam War—has become Scoutmaster of Camp Chippewa. Jonathan, meanwhile, has married, divorced, and taken over his father’s highly successful trucking business. When something unthinkable involving Jonathan’s teenage grandson and daughter-in- law happens at the camp, its aftermath test the depths—and the limits—of Nelson's selflessness and bravery. The Hearts of Men is Butler’s astute exploration of what it means to be a good person and whether we have to be intrinsically good or if it’s possible to get there by trying, failing, and trying again.