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By October 1967... the Summer of Love is history, rock and roll is dark and revolutionary, and people in the small East Texas community of Center Springs want only a quiet life. Unluckily, two years earlier, Anthony Agrioli met newlyweds Cody and Norma Faye Parker in a Vegas casino and heard their enthusiastic descriptions of Center Springs as the perfect place to settle down and raise a family. Now handsome hit man Agrioli and a blonde bombshell full of surprises need a place to hide out and, if possible, duck retribution from his Las Vegas crime boss.

Thirteen-year-old Top Parker has what his grandmother, Miss Becky, calls a Poisoned Gift. His dreams, though random and disconnected, always seem to come true. This time Top dreams he's a wagon wheel with spokes converging from all directions. To him, the spokes symbolize that something is coming. And it is--Center Springs will soon become a combat zone when a squad of gangsters arrives. Oddly, they're after something else. Not Agrioli--yet. Add a sheriff crooked as a dog's hind leg, an unsolved murder in the river bottoms, counterfeit money, and a bank robbery to this country-noir Shakespearian comedy, cast it with Wortham's real and sometimes wacky characters including a constable and a judge, and the outcomes become unpredictable.

As a boy, award-winning writer Reavis Z. Wortham hunted and fished the river bottoms near Chicota, Texas, the inspiration for his fictional Center Springs. The author of Doreen's 24 HR Eat Gas Now Café as well as the acclaimed Red River mysteries, Reavis is humor editor and frequent contributor for Texas Fish and Game Magazine, writing on everything from fishing to deer hunting. His work has also appeared in American Cowboy, Texas Sporting Journal, and several other magazines. A retired educator of 35 years, he and wife Shana live in Frisco, Texas.

www.reaviszwortham.com