"Bird's prose sets the bar high for his contemporaries in this slice-of-life tale marbled with self-destruction and ambiguous hellfire magic. Smart, deep, and honest. Highly recommended."

--CHAD LUTZKE, author of Slow Burn on Riverside and Of Foster Homes and Flies

In this speculative coming-of-age tale, Holden Caulfield gets a makeover and settles down in the Eighties. He doesn't know it yet, but he has a date with the dark side...

The year is 1987. Before the end of the Cold War, before O.J. and the L.A. riots and the World Wide Web. Hair is big, excess is in, and Weston Mercer is slowly losing his mind.

First, it's all so familiar. Evenings spent at the local oyster bar, followed by late nights in the pines, watching his cousin jam with his infamous band, Olympus. Days spent in a haze of drugs and classic TV and miso soup. And something else--a miserable sort of existence shrouded from purpose beyond the implacable pall of depression.

Then he meets a stranger who reveals things, dark things. Things Wes wishes he never would have heard. In the shadow of these darker truths, nothing can ever be the same...




Love. Addiction. Music. Death. Sex. Obsession. Madness.