Groundskeeping by Lee Cole

This is a coming of age story set in Kentucky, which is where the first time author's home is. There is an unusually broad spectrum of people represented for this sort of book. The wide-angle perspective may owe something to the fact that the main character, slightly older is slightly older and has a lot of experiential miles behind him. Owen is 28, a University of Kentucky graduate from a blue-collar background recently emerged from a period of drug abuse, unemployment and homelessness to reluctantly move into the basement of his grandfather’s falling down house in Louisville. He’s taken a groundskeeping job at nearby Ashby College so he can take a writing workshop; employees are allowed one free class, but he and one other employee are the only ones there for that. There he meets and becomes involved with a Muslim woman who was born in Yugoslavia in what is now Bosnia. Despite them having a meeting of the mind (and body) the cultural gap between them is great, something they discover and confront as they meet each other's families. This is a well played story that shines a mirror on the mix of people that make up millennials.