The Year of the Mad Jag

by Jonathan Slator

Overview

Arizona, 1980: A traveler from "across the pond" falls in with a ragtag gang of marijuana growers and soon finds himself in a remote canyon terrorized by a huge cat: a jaguar strayed north from Mexico. Before long, he is heading south across the border, into a criminal underworld far more ruthless than the harmless rebels he's left behind. Along for the ride is magnetic, contradictory Emma: his blessing and curse, his angel and demon.

From high-jinks to high tension, from delirium to disaster, The Year of the Mad Jag rollicks through a more innocent time, when, even so, the stakes were life and death, love and heartbreak. With his roller-coaster storytelling, love of language, and deep connection to the natural world, Jonathan Slator takes his place alongside Edward Abbey, Thomas McGuane, and Hunter S. Thompson as a classic writer of the counterculture West.

The Year of the Mad Jag was a semifinalist in both the 2017 William Faulkner, William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, 2017, and the 2018 Elixir Press Fiction Competition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798987856819
Publisher:	Hoopern Publishing
Publication date:	06/02/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	296
File size:	4 MB

Editorial Reviews

"With this roisterous novel based on a real story, Jonathan Slator joins that rare rank of writers who can shift without a clutch between delicious sex scenes, cliff-hanging chases in Arizona canyons, and the slang of Brits and 1980s marijuana growers in love, fear, or disgust. He is equally erudite in quoting lines from Lewis Carroll, Tolkien, and Dylan while never leaving out wise nods and belly-laughs for his readers. For fans of Southwestern U.S. canyonlands, the bonds of friendship, Seventies promiscuity, and cannabis cultivation long before legalization, this is a masterpiece."

-Stephen Fox, author of Odyssey: Love and Terror in Greece 1969

"This book is indescribable in the most hypnotic sense: from breathtaking jeep chases to cross-border smuggling, all couched in prurient poetry, Slator delivers an endless stream of transatlantic argot. A unique literary style backed by a driving narrative and a cursed menage à trois make this a fiercely compelling read."

-Lara Santoro, author of Mercy and The Boy

"Here is the Shantaram of the American West. At once lyrical and prosaic, The Year of the Mad Jag is a nostalgic hymn to the aphrodisiacs of criminality, drugs, and, of course, sex."

-Alex Dryden, author of Death in Siberia

"The Year of the Mad Jag is a rollicking yarn about illegal marijuana growing in the counterculture of the 1970s-and it's also an acutely observed account of a bemused, confused love triangle: three English people loosed into the hippie freedom of the desert Southwest, yawing between adventure and recklessness, love and irresolvable torment. In this extraordinary novel, Slator combines a poet's gift for describing the natural world with a memoirist's unsparing honesty in portraying the obsessions of lust and love."

-Allegra Huston, author of Love Child: A Memoir of Family Lost and Found and Write What You Don't Know: 10 Steps to Writing with Confidence, Energy, and Flow

"I've read a lot of books in my life. This one I would read every day if I could erase my memory. The novel is incredible."

-Suzanne Romero, early reader

"I find it quite ironic that the most dangerous thing about weed is getting caught with it."

-Bill Murray, actor

From the Publisher