Galveston: A Novel

by Nic Pizzolatto Narrated by Michael Kramer

Overview

On the same day that Roy Cady is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he senses that his boss, a dangerous loan-sharking bar-owner, wants him dead. Roy is alert to the possibility that a routine assignment could be a deathtrap. Yet what the would-be killers do to Roy Cady is not the same as what he does to them, and after a smoking spasm of violence, they are mostly dead and he is mostly alive.



Before Roy makes his getaway, he realizes there are two women in the apartment, one of them still breathing, and he sees something in her frightened, defiant eyes that causes a fateful decision. He takes her with him as he goes on the run from New Orleans to Galveston, Texas-an action as ill-advised as it is inescapable. The girl's name is Rocky, and she is too young, too tough, too sexy-and far too much trouble. Roy, Rocky, and her sister hide in the battered seascape of Galveston's country-western bars and seedy hotels, a world of treacherous drifters, pickup trucks, and ashed-out hopes.



Recalling the moody violence of the early novels of Cormac McCarthy and Denis Johnson, this powerful, potent, and atmospheric thriller is impossible to put down.

Editorial Reviews

Kirkus Reviews

For a mob enforcer and a teenage whore on the run, there's no escaping the violent past; this first novel follows a story collection (Between Here and the Yellow Sea, 2006). Violence shadowed Roy Cady's childhood in East Texas. His alcoholic father fell to his death; his mother killed herself. She had worked for a bar owner and racketeer, and at 17 Roy started working for him too. Eventually he moved to New Orleans and became the muscle for another racketeer, Stan Ptitko. Now it's 1987, and 40-year-old Roy is reeling from a lung-cancer diagnosis; he's convinced it's terminal. Stan sends him to intimidate a corrupt union official, but it's a setup; Stan wants him dead. Roy survives a furious shootout and flees, taking along blond 18-year-old Rocky, another Texan. She's a runaway who's just started turning tricks. Driving west, she persuades Roy to stop at a secluded cabin and emerges with her baby sister Tiffany. Here the story line frays as we peek into Roy's future; 20 years on, he's a cancer survivor, rendering pointless his earlier end-of-life crisis. And the fast-forward doesn't resolve Pizzolatto's dilemma-whether to write a pulpy crime story or a tale of the spiritual salvation of an ex-con. It seems like the latter as Roy plays the Good Samaritan, checking the girls into a Galveston motel. But then he drives to Dallas for a reunion with an old flame, now happily married. It's a devastating encounter. Shrewd, mature Loraine demolishes Roy's romantic memories, recalling him as an angry, jealous, resentful lover. Back in Galveston, the crime element resurfaces. Roy strangles a motel neighbor, a junkie and potential blackmailer. He then tries some blackmail himself, threatening Stan;his weapon is some incriminating paperwork he'd retrieved from that New Orleans crime scene. The result is catastrophic, for Roy and Rocky both. An unsatisfying split-personality novel redeemed by some terrific dialogue.

From the Publisher

"An often incandescent fever dream of low-rent, unbearable beauty.... Galveston, in its authenticity and fearless humanism, recalls only the finest examples of the form." - New York Times Book Review

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171038038
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	06/22/2010
Edition description:	Unabridged

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