The Last Great American Novel
“The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other."
Author's Note
This is not my story. After some deliberation, there was no alternative but to write it as it was told to me. The main character and I were cellmates during a period of incarceration. During that time I
read more books than in my entire life prior. A good book became a temporary key to the gate, passed from tier to tier and block to block.
My chance encounter with the main character, combined with a newfound love of novels, convinced me I could write one of my own. The first draft was written while incarcerated with tiny golf pencils
on scraps of paper and the backs of legal forms.
Whatever its flaws, I made a promise to write this story and kept it. What follows is a genuine jailhouse tale.
