FOMITE

A small boy flees a toxic family, all the way across the alley to Rip's Bar & Package Liquor Store and a vivid troupe of broken people in the Albuquerque Bosque. They hide him from his car-thief drunkard father, his cocaine-freak mother, and his ganged-up abusive brother. The boy gladly trades family for a hodgepodge of drinkers and losers. But it's bad timing. A new bridge proposed across the Rio Grande will wreck the fragile ghetto. The barflies share responsibility for the child while their Bosque crumbles. They collect misery like small change and rally to keep their neighborhood alive. Will the working poor beat City Hall and keep the kid out of the system?

 

Praise

A Rising Tide is a gritty, smart, deftly plotted novel full of lively and unforgettable characters, and Jones's Albuquerque is as alive on the page as the Northeastern towns of Russell Banks. Read this book."

—Tom Barbash, author of Stay Up With Me

 

Jones' rich crisp prose reads like poetry, telling a story ripped from the headlines with heartbreaking clarity and razor sharp detail. The cast of misfits, thugs, lost souls and do-gooders left me with important questions about the value of neighbors and neighborhoods. The best book I've read in a long time. 

—Anne Hillerman, author of Rock With Wings and Spider Woman's Daughter

 

About the Author

Scott Archer Jones is currently living and working on his sixth novel in northern New Mexico, after stints in the Netherlands, Scotland and Norway plus less exotic locations. He’s worked for a power company, grocers, a lumberyard, an energy company (for a very long time), and a winery. He has launched three books. Jupiter and Gilgamesh, a Novel of Sumeria and Texas in 2014, The Big Wheel in 2015, and this one, A Rising Tide of People Swept Away.

 

 

Review in Taos News

Inteview on radio station KSJE