LULLABY ROAD

In LULLABY ROAD, James Anderson returns to the remote Utah desert setting of his glowingly reviewed first novel The Never-Open Desert Diner... this time in winter, with snow blanketing the desert like a cross between Breaking Bad and Fargo.

Local truck driver Ben Jones, protagonist of The Never-Open Desert Diner, is well acquainted with Highway 117, a remote road through the Utah desert trafficked only by oddballs, fugitives, and those looking to escape the world. Winter has come to Highway 117, so when Ben finds an abandoned, mute Hispanic child at a lonely gas station along his route, far from any semblance of proper civilization, he knows something has gone terribly awry. With the help of his eccentric neighbors, Ben sets out to help the kid and learn the truth. In the process he makes new friends and loses old ones, finds himself in mortal danger, and uncovers buried secrets far more painful than he could have imagined.

Anderson’s beautiful, hilarious, heartbreaking, and inspiring prose in LULLABY ROAD will captivate readers of quirky crime stories in unusual places and smart, well-crafted crime fiction in this devastatingly powerful crime novel about parenthood, loss, and the desert in winter.

James Anderson was born in Seattle, Washington, and grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He is a graduate of Reed College and received his MFA in creative writing from Pine Manor College. His first novel was The Never-Open Desert Diner. His short fiction, poetry, essays, and reviews have appeared in many magazines, including The Bloomsbury Review, New Letters, Solstice, Northwest Review, Southern Humanities Review, and others, and he previously served as the publisher and editor in chief of Breitenbush Books.