Publisher Description:
After burning through his first six-pack of the night, The Narrator decides it's time to take back some semblance of control in his life. The next morning, he breaks into his ex-wife's house and steals the taxidermied badger he'd given to her as a token of their marriage.
With the badger back in his control, The Narrator returns to The Lucky Clover, his old haunt in the town of Paradise, a reservation bordertown in western South Dakota. Soon he finds himself entrenched in the town and with a wild and rough group of individuals, most prominently Nanny, a six-foot redhead and amateur Madam with a fascination with all things illicit.
One night, The Narrator discovers and takes a sizable amount of cocaine, and is marked for death by Ray Kennedy, a man haunted by his own racial background. Broke, and with no other options, The Narrator turns to crime to repay his debt, devising a scheme that involves the betrayal of his new girlfriend, Laura.
Desperate, The Narrator undertakes his plan, only to find his misstep had been counted on by those closest to. He soon finds violence is the only language spoken in this sparse and hard country he calls home, and his one action has set off a chain of tragedy that cannot be reversed.
With an unforgettable cast of characters surviving in a world where debts are never truly paid off, The Lucky Clover achieves a stark and realistic look at life along the reservation border. With insight and grace, Nick Heeb composes a life-like mural of people who struggle daily against a fate lesser people would simply resign themselves to.
Praise for THE LUCKY CLOVER:
"Some of us, by simple grace, sit on the merry-go-round enjoying the ride while others struggle just to stay on. The damned thing's going too fast, their legs keep getting away from them, everything they have slides over the edge and is gone. These are the folks Nick Heeb writes about. Don't try to make writing like this safe by saying it's gritty or transgressive or classic noir. Those are words, and this is real." --James Sallis, author of Drive and the Lew Griffin cycle |
