He can’t help that he was born a catalyst. Or do anything about it other than destroy himself, and he isn’t made that way. Hope hasn’t died in him yet. Neither has a streak of idealism. That’s why he keeps moving from place to place. It’s what makes him both crave human contact and shy away from it. It’s what makes him run.
John Faith is looking for a place where enough people can see past the outer man to the one who lives inside; a place where he’ll be accepted for what he is, not what he appears to be. He’s looking for what he’s never had and wants more than anything else.
He’s looking for a home.
And what he keeps finding, wherever he goes, is a wasteland of strangers.
Author’s Note
WHILE THE TOWN of Pomo, Lake Pomo, and Pomo County are loosely based on actual Northern California locales, they are nonetheless products of the author’s imagination. Similarly, while the Pomo is a very real Native American tribe, and care has been taken to accurately describe its customs, legends, and historical and modern travails, the Pomo characters portrayed in these pages are fictitious. Also fictitious are all other characters, and the author’s interpretations of social, economic, political, and racial issues concerning the general geographical region depicted herein; in no way are they intended to represent real people or actual, specific issues.
THANKS TO BETTE Golden Lamb and Melissa Ward for providing valuable research information and to Peter Crowther and Edward E. Kramer for including a much different, embryonic, novelette-length version of this novel, under the title “The Intruder,” in their White Wolf anthology, Heartlands.
About the Author
Bill Pronzini has published seventy-nine novels, thirty-eight of which feature the Nameless Detective, Americas longest-running PI series, begun in 1971. He is also the author of four nonfiction books and three hundred fifty short stories, and the editor of numerous anthologies. Among his many awards is the Mystery Writers of America Grand Master, presented in 2008—a distinction he shares with his wife, crime novelist Marcia Muller, the 2005 Grand Master recipient. The couple lives in Northern California.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1997 by Bill Pronzini
Cover design by Neil Alexander Heacox
ISBN: 978-1-4976-2590-7
This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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A Wasteland of Strangers Page 30