In this follow-up to God Clobbers Us All, "it’s impossible not to be charmed by Edgar Donahoe (Publishers Weekly)," and he’s back for another misguided adventureWhen Edgar is expelled from college for drunkenly bellowing expletives from a dorm window at 3:00 am, he hitchhikes to Colorado and trains as a cook. A postcard arrives from Edgar’s college buddy, Mountain Moses, inviting him to a Caribbean island. Once there Edgar cooks at the local touri...

A humorous coming-of-age novel following eighteen-year-old orderly Edgar Donahoe as he navigates romance, drugs, and friendship, culminating in a mysterious disappearanceSet against the decaying halls of a San Diego rest home in the 1970s, God Clobbers Us All is the shimmering, hysterical, and melancholy account of eighteen-year-old surfer-boy orderly, Edgar Donahoe, and his struggles with romance, death, friendship, and an ill-advised affair with the wife...

Eddie Plum, who insists he’s been unjustifiably committed to a California psychiatric hospital, manages to finally escape after fourteen years of incarceration to start his life anewOn the run, he holes up in a sheltered barrio on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean owned by his wealthy but unsympathetic father. Here he meets Sweets, the telepathic dog, laments the loss of Sofia, his madhouse lover, and plays the horses at the Del Mar Racetrack. Eventually he meets up ...

This debut work of personal narrative from cult favorite Poe Ballantine is a Greyhound odyssey through America's margins where odd jobs, cheap beer, and unforgettable misfits reveal what it really means to be humanPoe Ballantine's risky, personal essays are populated with odd jobs, eccentric characters, boarding houses, buses, and beer. He takes us along on his journey by bus through small town America (including a detour to Mexico) exploring what it means to be a ...

FOR READERS OF IN COLD BLOOD AND MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVILThis work of true crime as memoir is as much of an investigation of a shocking murder as it is a portrait of small-town America and the folks that make their homes there—and a deeply moving examination of parenting an autistic childFor well over twenty years, Poe Ballantine traveled America, taking odd...

**"**I explained to Tom that dealing with the bully was no different than dealing with the mountain lion. They were both predators looking for easy prey."Poe Ballantine visits his dying Grandfather Bing, receives free rent in return for evicting difficult tenants from the Totalitarian Hotel, models nude for budding artists, reconnects with his parents, befriends a lonely Austrian tourist on the Greyhound bus, cooks and gambles in Vegas, falls in love, returns to his wife's homeland...