Synopsis

“George Jones is one of the evilest characters you’ll ever find in a book.” –R.G. Belsky, award-winning author of It’s News To Me

Javier Jimenez is on a glide path to college, while his brother, Alex, has done a 180 and is heading for trouble. Neither, however, have any idea what’s coming their way when George Jones sets in motion his plan for their neighborhood. It’s a cataclysmic vision of urban renewal replete with manmade disasters, civil unrest, and a tsunami of ambitious Zoomers.

Meanwhile, Alex and Javier’s feud quickly escalates, even as Alex finds himself in way over his head with Denker Street, the local gang. The bodies start falling, and Javier soon realizes Jones has put a target on his back. It’s time to go to ground. Can he keep Alex from falling further into the streets? Can he outplay Jones at his own game? All this and his own hopes, once so bright, now fading like a smog-shrouded LA skyline.

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Review

This novel will keep you guessing with its multiple moving parts, diverse characters, and perhaps even some situations you can relate to.

This book has several different storylines that took me a little time to understand how they connected. Politics is the center of it all, and you know how messy that can get.

At the center of this book are Javier and Alex. They are brothers, with one of them choosing the wrong path in life. Javier does his best to look out for Alex, but some nefarious characters have gotten their hooks into him, and it doesn’t look good. There are some seedy characters looking out for themselves (politics!), and not taking into consideration the people in town. It correlates to what is happening in our world, but on a fictional level.

The characters in this novel face some tough choices. Some are based on surroundings, others are based on their situation, and some are based on the hand they have been dealt in life.

This novel reflects a lot of what we see in our world today, but there is always hope for a better outcome.

We give this book 4 paws up.

About the Author

Having taught in the LA public schools for thirty years, Morgan now writes about the people and places he has come to know in the course of his career. During the pandemic, he began writing Gone To Ground. At the same time, Los Angeles was going through a series of scandals involving public officials as well as an uptick in the perennial “crises” of homelessness, immigration, and gentrification. Add to this the on-again-off-again California bullet train, and you have the main threads of this novel.

Morgan lives in Los Angeles with his wife, where he’s trying to learn his mother-in-law’s recipe for dhaar dhokli.

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