$14.00
Simone's long awaited novel is now out with award wining publisher Allen & Unwin and available for order worldwide. A German translation edition will follow from Random House DE in the Spring of 2012.
Synopsis: A young marine returns from Iraq, blinded and scarred by a roadside bomb and harboring a terrible secret. Called Black Jesus by his fellow soldiers on account of his name being White and his birthday being Christmas Day, he has returned to his decaying home town to sit in the back of his mother's junkshop, pop OxyContin and try to forget what he's seen. Into his life one day rides Gloria, a mysterious young dancer who is fleeing darkness and violence of a different kind. Part love story, part protest at the broken promises lying at the heart of the American Dream, Black Jesus is a passionate, twisted hymn to the marginalized and forgotten.
"A visionary, feel-good novel about redemption and surviving the traumas of youth." -- Ruth Hunter, The Bookseller
"An elegiac lament for a lost America... The beauty of the book lies in the depth of images, creating a hallucinatory experience and vividness that is as haunting as an apocalypse, motifs and themes are hammered home like nailed scraps of poetry to the wall." -- Luke May, Readings