Review: The Never-Open Desert Diner
James Anderson
Crown Publishers
2015
If you haven’t read this one, I think you are missing a good
book. Feels like a flashback to an
earlier time when reading was enjoyable, the story absorbing, tender but
authentic, and well spun. The title says
much more than I first thought. Lots of
other things are not open in this desert. Doors are locked and behind them the pasts
that hold people in the desert.
The dust cover front leaf says, “The Never Open Desert Diner powerfully evokes an unforgettable
setting and introduces readers to a cast of characters who will linger long
after the last page.” Generally, these
descriptions go overboard, but this one describes what I found in this
book. Ben Jones and Walt will remain
with me for a long time. They might be
archetype characters. The author does
have an MFA after all and has done some editor type work. He probably knows a little about that sort of
thing. Whatever or whoever they are, the
reader becomes involved immediately with them.
A brief synopsis of the story line is that Ben Jones
stumbles across an archway in the desert that he’d not seen in his 20 some
years of delivery truck driving this route.
He decides to check it out since he needs to answer the call of nature
anyway. He discovers a house behind the
arch that he assumes is deserted. It isn’t
and the story goes from there. The scene
where he meets the resident of the house is laugh out loud humor. This book has plenty of wit, humor, danger,
and pathos. The bad guys are really despicable,
too. All that teamed with the cast of
characters mentioned above make for a good read and it is. Find a copy and see what you think.
It’s the most satisfying fiction read I have
run across in quite a while. Action,
dialogue, story all worked for me. Good work, James Anderson.
I received this book from the publishers in return for a
review.
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