River of Angels

From John Fante's biographer, ten stories of blood relations, family skeletons, random forces, and the often-violent folly of love. Set against the double-edged splendors of greater Los Angeles, from downtown streets to studio soundstages to gated mansions, from desert to mountains to sea, these are stories of people striving to reckon with the American hands they've been dealt in the marked-card gamble of their lives. A stoner son heading off to fight in a war drives his mother to see the eye doctor. A fourth-grade Catholic-school teacher, unattached, meets her match made in hell. Desperado artist-lovers flee the scenes of their crimes. A stranger knocks at the front door... Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, husbands, wives, and roving agents of chaos collide here with sometimes comic, often tragic but always lasting effects. In story after story something happens that matters-not least to the reader.