A lonely writer finds love with a paper towel giant.
Brian Dunleavy comes to the North Woods to write a serious novel. Instead, he falls in love with a kitschy paper towel mascot.
It begins with a whistle in the trees and the unmistakable sense of being watched. A bootprint the size of a bathtub. Then a muscular, 43-foot-tall lumberjack steps out of the forest.
Mighty Max is handsome. He is kind. Broad-shouldered and blue-eyed, he lives in permanent flannel. He claims he was born from tall tales and campfire legends—back when giants were needed, and believed in. But giants fade when they are mocked. Legends disappear when they’re forgotten.
As solitude turns to intimacy, myth turns warm and very, very tangible. Brian finds himself lifted in the careful palm of the colossal man whose shadow stretches across the meadow like dusk itself. Beneath cold stars and beside impossible bonfires, he discovers that loving a giant means choosing to believe in him even when belief bends reality.
Reality is definitely bending. And when Max is reclaimed by the forest, Brian may be the only one who can write him back into being. If stories invent their tellers, who is keeping whom alive?
Strange, tender, playful, and proudly queer, The Strange and Unbelievable Tall Tale of Mighty Max is a mythic romance about loneliness, longing, and the radical act of loving something larger than life.
For readers who cherish the mythic queer devotion of The Song of Achilles, the tender whimsy of The House in the Cerulean Sea, and the wistful magic of Puff the Magic Dragon.
