Bones in the Wash Ebook Free Till Election Day
My first novel, Bones in the Wash: Politics is Tough. Family is Tougher, is set during the 2008 presidential campaign in New Mexico. It’s one part political thriller, one part family soap, and one part murder mystery.
Ambitious Albuquerque Mayor Tomas Zamara, charged with delivering the state’s five electoral votes for John McCain, is directed to shut down voter registration drives and accuse the Democrats of stealing the election. He’s also grappling with a volatile new woman and a demanding family. Then, when a flash flood unearths the skeleton of his long-missing wife, investigators zero in on Zamara as a suspect.
Challenging him every step of the way is fierce, young Sierra León of the Democracy Project, who calls on him to listen to his better self and reject his party’s dirty tricks.
Bones in the Wash, awarded Best Book 2015 by the Bay Area Independent Book Publishers Association (BAIPA), is free as an ebook until Election Day.
One of the recurring storylines in Bones is voter suppression and dirty tricks. I remember one reader, from Canada, who told me how much he enjoyed the book, but he thought that the many tactics in the book that made it harder for people to vote seemed unrealistic. I told him that all were based on documented incidents, though not necessarily in New Mexico.
But from the vantage point of now, those voter suppression actions in 2008 seem so innocent, almost quaint.
Early on in the story, my protagonist, Tomas Zamara, a Republican, expresses his discomfort focusing on making it harder to vote. Well, that’s obviously fiction.
(For an overview of how Republicans are engaging in voter suppression and disenfranchisement in the 2020 election, see “Conservative Judicial Decisions Keep Boosting GOP Voter Suppression,” by Ari Berman in Mother Jones and “A Judicial ‘Shitshow’ Blocks Absentee Ballots in Wisconsin,” by John Nichols in The Nation. The most galling example Berman references is in Florida, where 64 percent of voters approved a ballot measure two years ago to restore voting rights to former felons, but the legislature subsequently passed a law requiring them to pay all fines before they can vote. This could result in the disenfranchising of 775,000 Florida citizens.)
Here are a couple of my favorite reviews of Bones in the Wash:
✭✭✭✭✭ A political page turner
Bones in the Wash is a fast-moving whodunnit built around the 2008 presidential campaign as it played out in New Mexico. The story alternates between two attractive and sympathetic characters who are on opposite sides of the campaign. It includes political dirty tricks, international drug gangs, a disappeared spouse who may have been murdered, cranky dysfunctional families, and lots of beautiful New Mexico countryside. I was up till 4 am finishing this one. The surprises continue right to the last page. I highly recommend it.
✭✭✭✭✭ Highly recommended
It is remarkable how the author so completely understands the characters he develops for this story: the dynamics of Zamara family; the competitive relationship between two young women friends; the distinctly different romances between young Sierra and her boyfriend, between Mayor Zamara and the mysterious Tory, or the strained marriage of Sierra’s parents. You feel as if you’re peering into the private lives of real people, all skillfully set against the backdrop of the highly competitive world of Presidential politics, with the sinister world of organized crime casting a faint but menacing shadow. It takes a fertile imagination to dream up a flash flood that threatens the lives of the mayor and his lover on an outing in one part of the state, while uncovering the bones of his murdered wife in another. I found myself eagerly turning the page to discover how the various plot lines in this book were going to turn out. Highly recommended.
(More reviews here.)
I hope you take advantage of the free Bones in the Wash ebook and enjoy reading it. I’d love to hear what you think.
Oh, and please vote November 3. (Or earlier, if you can.)
Recent Comments