It is early 1950's Idaho and the season of the chinook – a warm February breeze that blows across the flat cookie-sheet plans from the wrong direction. It brings arid earth and hard times, making the end of childhood for thirteen-year-old Jake Weber and the beginning of trouble for his family. When Jake defied his father’s order to stay away from the river, an innocent swim ends with something far and beyond anyone’s expectations: Jake witnesses the brutal murder of “that woman Sugar Babe” by Harold Endicott, who owns the mortgage on the Weber farm. Jake is forbidden to speak of it and name the one responsible, even as the woman’s lover, a black man, is falsely accused. Over the course of a long hot summer, this crime and it’s devastating aftermath forever alters Jake’s vision of his parents and his world, teaching him the true source of danger, and the true power of forbidden knowledge.

“A taut, brutal narrative...that comes to hypnotize, shimmering like the brilliant sun on the alfalfa fields."

– New York Times Book Review

"The finely wrought work concerns an adolescent who witnesses a murder and is compelled, by his father, to keep silent. Balancing the hero's sensitivity against the harsh reality of farm life in the 1950s, Spanbauer tells his short, brutal story with delicacy and deep respect for place and character. Forceful and moving, this novel is a promising debut."

– Publishers Weekly

“Spanbauer’s graceful handling of a coming-of-age novel casts a newness to the form, and in doing so takes the reader along by the heart. Elegantly achieved, Faraway Places is the debut of a remarkable artist.”

– 7 Days magazine