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Caravel Mystery Books
February 2015
On Sale: February 17, 2015
Featuring: Ben Jones; Claire; Walt Butterfield
288 pages
ISBN: 0912887109
EAN: 9780912887104
Hardcover
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Mystery
BEN JONES, the protagonist of James Anderson s haunting
debut novel, The Never-Open Desert Diner (Caravel Books,
February, 2015), is on the verge of losing his small
trucking company. A single, thirty-eight-year-old truck driver, Ben's route
takes him back and forth across one of the most desolate and
beautiful regions of the Utah desert. The orphan son of a
Native American father and a Jewish social worker, Ben is
drawn into a love affair with a mysterious woman, Claire,
who plays a cello in the model home of an abandoned housing
development in the desert. Her appearance, seemingly out of nowhere, reignites a
decades-old tragedy at a roadside café referred to by the
locals as The Never-Open Desert Diner. The owner of the
diner, Walt Butterfield, is an embittered and solitary old
man who refuses to yield to change after his wife s death. Ben s daily deliveries along the atmospheric and evocative
desert highway bring him into contact with an eccentric cast
of characters that includes: John, an itinerant preacher who
drags a life-sized cross along the blazing roadside; the
Lacey brothers, Fergus and Duncan, who live in boxcars
mounted on cinderblocks; and Ginny, a pregnant and homeless
punk teenager whose survival skills make her an unlikely
heroine. Ben's job as a truck driver is more than a career; it is a
life he loves. As he faces bankruptcy and the possible loss
of everything that matters to him, he finds himself at the
heart of a horrific crime that was committed forty years
earlier and now threatens to destroy the lives of those left
in its wake. Ben discovers the desert is relentless in its grip, and what
the desert wants, it takes. An unforgettable story of love
and loss, Ben learns the enduring truth that some violent
crimes renew themselves across generations. The Never-Open
Desert Diner is a unique blend of literary mystery and noir
fiction that evokes a strong sense of place. It is a story that holds the reader and refuses to let go
and will linger long after the last page.
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