March 7, 2014
Just released: ENCOUNTER by Alana Lorens
Jake Patrin has seen his share of trouble.
When he turned thirty-five, he had the year from Hell with a capital H. His wife divorced him and he lost a good job driving truck in King City, California. Worse, a collision with a Mack truck one night landed him in the hospital for three months and left him in constant pain, controlled by serious doses of Oxycontin, which became his master. It took him a year to kick the narcotic but he now faces a daily struggle to leave the addiction behind.
That’s why he’s working as caretaker at Sherman Ranch, near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Living in the middle of nowhere, he hopes to stay clean and sober. Weekly trips to Santa Fe, or a desperate phone call, hook him up with a middle-aged men’s Alcoholics Anonymous group that help keep him sane. His sponsor is an old Native American, John White Horse, who’s fought his own good fight for forty years. John takes no bullshit. He’s a good friend and support.
Groups come and go, renting the place for their special purposes. Some have really strange demands—take out all the TVs, or hide the movie collections. Some bring truckloads of horses. Some simply find their way to the hot tub and never leave.
Jake is prepared for the group of fancy-schmancy lawyers renting the ranch for a week in March, despite the boxes of alcohol they bring in. He thinks he can ignore this. He hopes he can.
He’d better. The one thing he can control is his own sobriety. But as he soon discovers, everything else this week is totally out of his hands.
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| Teo Haroun and the other lawyers in his firm look forward to the retreat at the Sherman Ranch in northern New Mexico. The boss has laid down some rules—no phones, no computers, no communication with the outside world—that make them uneasy. But the corporate team-building exercises are necessary for this firm to survive its inner sniping and turmoil—and to protect the secrets they hold.
Inez Suela and thirty other Mexicans have paid a coyote hundreds of pesos to take them across the border into the United States, where they hope to make a better life. The crowded truck heads north into New Mexico to meet their local driver, the occupants unaware that a freak March snowstorm is waiting in its path. Jake Patrin, the caretaker of the Ranch, fights demons of his own as he struggles daily with addiction. Working far from the city on the lonely Ranch, hosting those who rent the facility, is his protection and solace. But he’s about to lose the only peace he’s been able to grasp. Davi Pilar needs to make some fast money to appease a couple of St. Louis loan sharks, so he agrees to pick up a truckload of illegals and take them to St. Louis. He drives to New Mexico, not knowing that Inez, the woman who rejected him years before, is one of those on that truck. The intersection of these people, the collision of their cultures, the revelation of their secrets—all these things lead to violence, death, and even redemption in their New Mexico ENCOUNTER. |
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For more information, go to alanalorens.com. You can find ENCOUNTER in ebook and print formats at Amazon.com and Three Fates Press.
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