Chapter 1
FORTUNATE SON
DOWN AND OUT IN OMAHA
Andre, the community organizer, considers the stunning woman with the beautiful restaurant in the Flatiron Building, not far from the Old Market-he still wears the amulet around his neck she gave him. It was her that brought him baack, dragged him nearly, to Omaha...
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...Like a ghost Andre wanders the old yard for a bit as if seeking a total eclipse of the sun. He sees the steel building he helped build with his cousin Jamie and his wild bunch crew decades ago is still intact. They build it for his old man and his partners, the Trico brothers in some sort of enterprise. There were too many to keep track of with his father.
Chapter 3
THE NUMBING
EVERYTHING THAT WAS
...as AB Andre looks out the taffrail, straining at the capstan; as he hears the trumpets and the hammering drum...grabbing a sextant, he watches for cetaceans...seeking the ambergris of life, with his 'body o death' appearance, he realizes:
like solitude--water is great, but too much...will drown you.
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He reminisces back from not too long ago. To relative civilization. Before his escape. Aware that disintegration is something that happens to everything.
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...He shares with others on the training ground what it is to be a volunteer...a volunteer is somebody who didn't understand the question.
Chapter 5
SAVE THE WORLD
EVERYTHING THAT WAS
...The neighborhood sweet Judy Jane landed in looked like the burnt up set for Westside Story after a storm, a bad one. Windows blown out. Doors boarded up. Trash all over. But the Missionaries of Charities row of brownstones were neat and a haven. A vegetable garden within walls was a surprise.
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After that Judy found herself in northern California living in a tree - to save it.
WHAT PEOPLE SAY
Parks emplys a deep, long knowledge of Seattle...with a dreamy, druggy, deepdiving narrative.
The chaos that can encompass one's existance shines throughout the pages...
REVIEWS
"A raucous, if at times difficult, literary concoction in a bizarre world of radicals."
KIRKUS REVIEWS / EMPTY BOTTLE OF SMOKE, CONON PARKS
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"Parks employs a deep, long knowledge of Seattle...with a dreamy, druggy, deepdiving narrative."
SEATTLE REVIEW OF BOOKS / EMPTY BOTTLE OF SMOKE, CONON PARKS
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"An unapologetically manic and original novel about a drifter who heads for the Aleutian Islands in the 1980s."
KIRKUS REVIEWS / SOME KIND OF ENDING, CONON PARKS
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"The chaos that can encompass one’s existence shines throughout the pages of Some Kind of Ending....The characters are all on a collision course, but where will they intersect? Will there be anyone left in the aftermath? "
SAN FRANCISCO BOOK REVIEW / EMPTY BOTTLE OF SMOKE, CONON PARKS
