Baker Vaughan: A Novel

“A smart, soulful novel that finds hope in faith’s many imperfections.”
Our Verdict - Get It - Kirkus Reviews

When a man realizes everything he's built isn't enough, he must decide what and who still matters. A beautifully transporting novel by debut author Stuart Hotchkiss.

Baker Vaughan had everything—until a shattering loss and the weight of unexpressed grief brought his carefully constructed world to a halt. Stranded at the crossroads of identity and expectation, he must confront the ghosts of his past, from the hallowed halls of an Ivy League university to the quiet friction of small-town secrets.

Baker Vaughan is a deeply moving, character-driven novel about the courage it takes to strip away the armor of success. As corporate drama collides with psychological healing, Baker is forced to choose between running from his pain or embarking on a vulnerable, second-chance journey toward wholeness.

For readers drawn to rich, slow-burning literary fiction, this award-winning debut stands among the finest men-starting-over contemporary fiction books of recent years.

Novels that share these deeply moving themes of redemption and starting over include:

• “Theo of Golden” by Allen Levi: Both novels are character-driven meditations on revealing one's true self and searching for deeper meaning and authenticity. They're both introspective, spiritually attuned narratives about what lies beneath the surface of how people present themselves to the world. Both explore transformation through vulnerability—either by being truly seen (as in Theo of Golden) or by choosing to become one's authentic self (as in Baker Vaughan).
• “Whistler” by Ann Patchett: Both novels emphasize that genuine human connection—whether familial vans(Daphne and Eddie in Whistler) or spiritual (Baker's priesthood and community)—is redemptive and sustaining. Both suggest that isolation (physical or spiritual) is the real tragedy.
• “The Correspondent” by Virginia Evans: Both novels center on mid/later-life reassessment protagonists reevaluating their lives and identities after years of living inauthentically or compartmentalized existences. Both characters must also grapple with who they truly are versus who they've been pretending to be. Baker abandons his hollow advertising life in New York to confront his authentic self; Sybil examines her identity through letters, exploring who she was, hoped to be, and couldn't become.
• “All the Light We Cannot See” by Anthony Doerr: Both books dig beneath what people present to the world and grapple with characters who are complicit in systems or choices they may not fully endorse. The novels don't judge simplistically but instead explore the human cost of compromise—how people rationalize, survive, and carry guilt for what they've done or failed to do.
• “Remains of the Day” by Kazuo Ishiguro: Both novels feature protagonists who have structured their entire adult lives around an external identity—Stevens around the ideal of "dignity" and professional duty as a butler, Baker around corporate success and respectability. Both men realize, often too late, that they've sacrificed their authentic selves and callings for hollow constructed identities.
• “A Gentleman in Moscow” by Amor Towles: Both protagonists undergo a reckoning about the kind of life is worth living. Rostov discovers through confinement that dignity, human connection, and purpose matter more than status or freedom. Baker awakens in midlife to the realization that worldly success is hollow compared to spiritual authenticity. Both ask: What truly sustains a life?