A Literary Novel
One neighborhood bar. A year of Saturdays. Everything underneath both.
The
Last
Saturday
A novel by Nick Scott
Lock 44 Press
The Last Saturday is a work of literary fiction.
The bar is fictional. The people are fictional. The conversations are fictional.
But like most good fiction, they're built from years of observation.
No single person appears in these pages. Names have changed. Stories have blended together, the way memories do after enough Saturday nights.
The novel is told as though it unfolds over the course of a single year inside one neighborhood bar. In truth, it draws from many years, many conversations, and many lives.
If you've ever spent time in a small town… worked beside people you cared about… raised children… fallen in love… lost someone… or simply found yourself sitting at the same table long enough to watch life unfold… there's a good chance you'll find yourself in a chapter. Maybe two.
It asks what we're really building while we think we're making things, perfecting our craft, serving dinner, chasing dreams, or simply trying to make it to another Saturday.
Author's Note
People ask me all the time if this book is true.
The answer is yes.
And no.
I own a brewery on a river in a small canal town in northwest Ohio. If you've been there, you'll recognize pieces of it — the old brick buildings, the towpath, the fishermen, the music, the smell of smoke rolling out of the smoker on a Saturday morning.
You'll probably recognize a few people too. Or at least think you do.
The truth is that no character in this book is one person. They're made from years of conversations, stories, regulars, friends, strangers, family, and a thousand small moments that never seemed important until they started collecting into something larger. Some things happened exactly as written. Others happened to someone else. A few never happened at all, but still felt true.
For most of my life, I wrote in notebooks that almost nobody ever read. Poems. Questions. Half-finished stories. Things I noticed while fishing. Thoughts scribbled on receipt paper behind the bar. Sentences I was afraid I'd forget if I didn't write them down before the next customer walked in.
For years, I thought I was collecting ideas for a book. It turns out I was collecting Saturdays.
When I opened Wild Side Brewing, I thought I was building a brewery. I wasn't. I was accidentally building the setting.
The regulars showed up one at a time. Some stayed for years. Some only once. Some are gone now. They all left something behind.
Eventually I realized I wasn't writing about beer. Or rivers. Or writing. I was writing about the people who quietly become part of our lives while we're busy looking somewhere else — the ones who keep showing up, the ones who save us from ordinary Tuesdays and make Saturdays feel like home.
This book is for them. It's also for my kids. One day they'll know the brewery in a different way than I did. They'll hear stories they weren't there for. They'll meet people whose names they'll recognize but whose voices they'll never hear. I hope this gives them a few of those voices back.
And if you happen to find yourself in our little town someday, pull up a stool. Order whatever sounds good. Stay a little longer than you planned. There's a decent chance you'll leave with a story of your own.
And if you come back often enough... you'll probably become a regular too.
— Nicholas Scott