From the acclaimed author of Black Flies and Into the Savage Country and co-creator of top-ten N e tflix hit Outer Banks , a powerful new novel of class striving and the precarious dynamics of brotherhood in the Chicago suburbs of the late 1970s. "In our family, there was none of this crap about everyone being a winner," says Willie, the narrator, who looks back on his teen years--and his nearly mortal combat with his domineering older brother, Coyle. In the Brennan house four kids sleep in a single room, and are indoctrinated into "The Methods," a system of achievement and relentless striving, laced with a potent, sometimes violent version of sibling rivalry. The family is overseen by a raging bull of a father, a South Side tough guy who knocks them sideways when they don't perform well or follow his dictates. Rivals, enemies, and allies, the siblings contend with one another and their wealthy self-satisfied peers at New Trier, the famous upscale high school where the family has struggled to send them. Evoking their crucible of class struggle and peer pressures, Burke balances comedy, tragedy, and a fascinating cast of characters, delivering a book that reads like an instant classic--an unforgettable story of the intertwining of love and family violence, and of triumphant teen survival that echoes down through the years. “A slow-burning meditation on how the nuclear family unit shapes a child’s understanding of the world. The novel is sure to overlap fans of Margaret Atwood’s Cat’s Eye with those of Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. ” —Courtney Eathorne, Booklist “Moving and deeply personal . . . While The Brother Years is very much a rich, character-driven novel, it is also an affecting and consistently challenging study on class dynamics . . . A stirring testament to the power of resilience.” —Bradley Sides, Chapter 16 SHANNON BURKE is the author of the novels Safelight, Into the Savage Country, and Black Flies, a New York Times Notable Book. He has also worked on several film projects, including Syriana, and is the co-creator of the 2020 Netflix hit Outer Banks . He lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. 1: The Wager     The four of us—the Brennan kids—were a tight-knit, tumul­tuous, bickering, cohesive mob. Our father was a Southside dreamer full of elaborate plans meant to advance the fortunes of his family. Coyle, the oldest kid, was our drill sergeant, implementing Dad’s extreme orders with an iron fist. Brave, exacting, and unrelenting, Coyle had a spartan sensibility. I’ll give an example.   One day in the sixth grade my friend Jimmy and I were drawing pictures of tanks and dragons while listening to Hot Rocks on a cassette deck. Coyle came into the doorway and stood there with a judgmental scowl, hanging on to the molding, suspicious of the chaotic sounds coming from the cassette player.   “What’s this music?” he said.   “Rolling Stones,” Jimmy said. “Don’t you know it?”   “I don’t listen to music,” Coyle said. “It’s a waste of time.”   That was Coyle in a nutshell. Music was a waste of time. Everything was a waste of time except work and school and sports and the marching orders from Dad. As far as I could see, Coyle’s whole purpose in life was fulfilling our father’s wishes.   I was the second-oldest kid in the family and the one most different from Coyle. I did not fulfill my father’s wishes in anything. I was not orderly. I was not diligent. I liked any book with a barbarian or spaceship on the cover. I played Dun­geons and Dragons, which Coyle thought was about the lam­est thing he could imagine. I had a notebook of poems and little stories and made movies on Dad’s video recorder, mus­tering my younger siblings to act in these productions, all of which Coyle thought, of course, was a waste of time.   Our family was poor. I should get that out of the way at the beginning. Dad was taking classes to get his teacher’s certificate, but in the meantime he had about six jobs—paper delivery, painter, roofer, renovator, tennis pro, maintenance. And while Dad was going through his endless rounds of drudgery, and Mom was cooking or cleaning or repairing the old house, Coyle was left in charge of his younger siblings. He liked being in charge. Coyle’s natural, domineering tem­perament flowered when he had subjects to rule over. And there was no one he liked to boss around more than me.   He pointed out that I didn’t fold my clothes in the right way. I scattered food when I fed the cats. I missed the corners when I swept floors. To his eye, everything about my meth­ods was idiosyncratic and inefficient. But I didn’t care what he thought was the proper way. I wanted to do things my own way, which was endlessly irritating for him. And that was satisfying for me. Irritating Coyle was a side benefit to doing things in the way I wanted.   This pattern of instruction and resistance was the basis of our relationship for our childhood until the year I was twelve and Coyle