Damascus

Can people really change? Revelation on the road to Damascus leaves a life-long loser determined to try...

Meet Sol Ferrissey: petty thief, hopeless alcoholic, minor-league doper. Enjoying a rare moment of drug-induced clarity on the occasion of his 50th birthday, Sol devises a dangerous, misguided scheme resulting in a raft of badly burned bridges...

Taking advantage of the Hat--a mercurial old 'Nam buddy--Sol talks his way into possession of a cash-stuffed Halliburton steelcase and a too-quickly dwindling supply of cocaine. Fifty straight waking hours and a near-miss road catastrophe later, a frazzled Sol books himself a seedy motel room in a tiny deserted farmtown. There, over the course of a single night and day, his bizarre encounters with a shadowy trucker and an 'old-time' preacher leave him a changed man. His Halliburton stash lost...a life gained. 

Renouncing past sins, Sol returns to the City--dark outlook miraculously transformed into hope and light. He gives up the booze and dope, and tries to create a semblance of family with his skeptical girlfriend and her sad, silent child. But while his life now belongs to Jesus, his soul remains property of the Hat...and the Hat wants his cash...

Set in the go-go 1990's, Damascus serves up a manic stew of spiritual and cultural pop references, liberally spiced with sporadic bursts of idle violence and black humor. It's a sordid tale of one sorry sinner's  calamitous fall... and his relentless quest to find redemption.

-495 pages-