About this item

Winner of the prestigious PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, And West Is West is an inspired novel about the devastating power of new technology to corrupt innocent lives. When Jessica, a young Air Force drone pilot in Nevada, is tasked with launching a missile against a suspected terrorist halfway across the world, she realizes that though women and children are in the crosshairs of her screen, she has no choice but to follow orders. Ethan, a young Wall Street quant, is involved in more bloodless connection to war when he develops an algorithm that enables his company's clients to profit by exploiting the international instability caused by exactly this kind of antiterrorist strike. Though only minor players, the actions of these two people have global ramifications that tear lives apart - including their own.



About the Author

Ron Childress

Ron Childress was born in New York City and grew up in Connecticut and Florida. Originally planning to teach English literature and write fiction, he changed his career path after a year as a college adjunct. Moving from Florida to Washington, DC, he worked as a writer/editor for a professional association and then as a copywriter/technical writer/programmer for a marketing company that served high-tech clients. Along the way he was publishing short stories in offbeat magazines and counterculture journals. In the 2000s he began to concentrate on long fiction and completed four novel-length manuscripts before winning the 2014 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction for his fifth, AND WEST IS WEST, his first published novel.



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