About this item
From Lou Berney, the acclaimed, multi award-winning author of November Road and The Long and Faraway Gone, comes a Dark RideSometimes the person you least expect is just the hero you needTwenty-one-year-old Hardy "Hardly" Reed - good-natured, easygoing, usually stoned - is drifting through life. A minimum-wage scare actor at an amusement park, he avoids unnecessary effort and unrealistic ambitions. Then one day he notices two children, around six or seven, sitting all alone on a bench. Hardly checks if they're okay and sees injuries on both children. Someone is hurting these kids.He reports the incident to Child Protective Service.That should be the end of it. After all, Hardly's not even good at looking out for himself so the last thing he wants to do is look out for anyone else.
About the Author
I'm Lou Berney, and my most recent novel is NOVEMBER ROAD, a thriller and love story set against the backdrop of the JFK assassination. Don Winslow calls it "a staggeringly brilliant book and a flat-out terrific read." And yes, since you're wondering, I do plan to deliver a roller-bag full of unmarked hundred-dollar bills to his house.I'm also the author of three other novels, one of which, THE LONG AND FARAWAY GONE, won the Edgar, Anthony, Barry, Macavity, ALA, and Oklahoma Book awards. I discovered that there are a lot of different ways to nervously stammer and stumble through an acceptance speece.Between the ages of 12 and 19 I was fired from approximately nine different jobs, including newspaper delivery boy (dereliction of duty) , apartment complex maintenance man (general incompetence) , and photo darkroom attendant (dereliction of duty, general incompetence, inappropriate use of darkroom) . Since the age of 19, I have not been fired from a job.My wife and I travel whenever we can (and whenever we save up enough airline miles) . We've been to Australia, Japan, Egypt, and Colombia. My favorite experience was in Rwanda, where we visited the mountain gorillas. The guides warned us to be careful because although the gorillas are gentle, they are "gorilla gentle."I love dogs. No, I really mean it. I LOVE dogs. I happen to live with the best dog in the world, a golden retriever who thinks he can control me with his mind. But the joke is on him, because every time he stares at me I just give him a treat and he goes away.A (very) small sampling of my favorite writers, in no particular order: Kate Atkinson, Elmore Leonard, Kelly Link, Walter Mosely, Laura Lippman, Flannery O'Connor, Don Winslow, Megan Abbott, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Louise Erdrich, Stephen Harrigan, Ivy Pochoda, Lynda Barry.
