A literary historical novel

August 1953, Fillmore, California

Some wounds, some windows never close

The throaty bass rumble of asbestos-wrapped pipes, the growling, grew closer, then stopped. The right sound, one of theirs. Connor and a few others in the bar looked up when Stamper walked into Gutter’s, his entry announced by the wood-framed screen door clapping shut, the tortured screech of rusty closure springs released from the stretch.

Gutter Road is fast-paced ride through dust and decisions. Two men, Connor and Gentry, combat veterans, separated by layers in society. Connor a common man, left behind in the post-war upward surge. Thomas Gentry, an FBI agent in San Francisco. Each man has a need to help Artie Stamper, a mutual friend, taking different paths while struggling with poles apart personal demons, being pushed toward transformations, punching through lives with the women they’ve chosen in a shifting American culture. A rarely told story of men who came from other places, lured by California’s promises, falling like raindrops, absorbed in the California dust. Combat veterans. Soldiers who never stopped being soldiers, who missed the beat, the tight comradeship, the struggle to survive—at the same time hating it—riding grinding road machines to drown out the reverberating echoes and chaos of shell fire and the screams of comrades.