City of Angles
"Every man for himself and God against all" became the mantra of Homer V. Innes after the Great Recession killed his job. Aggrieved by his loss of status as a college-educated, white-collar man, he is about to learn what loss really looks like. Successive catastrophes rob him of nearly everything and plunge him into a spiral of despair and homelessness. So begins his epic journey through the gritty underbelly of Southern California as he searches for his missing son and tries to rebuild his life. His long, strange trip takes him across a Los Angeles that is both familiar and foreign, tragic and comic: In the course of his misadventures, he encounters a diverse and eccentric cast of urban characters, from the homeless on Skid Row, to runaways, drag queens, porn stars, and hookers, all of whom contribute to his ultimate epiphany as he seeks a place in the world and a new meaning for his life.
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"City of Angles is an uplifting look at a side of Los Angeles too little seen in fiction. Like John Fante, Loving turns a compassionate and comic eye on the downtrodden and elevates them in his assured debut."
--Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women, Visitation Street, Wonder Valley, and The Art of Disappearing
"In his sterling debut, William Loving unpacks the story of a man who loses everything after a deadly fire and then pinballs through Los Angeles' sad, though somehow ennobling, underbelly. Entertaining and finely crafted, spotlighting the marginalized like the Book of Job as envisioned by Nathaniel West, City of Angels reminds us that when we disdain the needy, we inevitably become one ourselves. A spellbinding, original work."
--Chip Jacobs, author of Arroyo
"Homer Virgil Innes (rhymes with Guinness), searches the hills, valleys, rivers and beaches of greater Los Angeles for his runaway son and a place to call home in this clear-eyed reimagining of The Aeneid. Loving spares Innes no tribulation as he creatively finds ways to survive homelessness, deprivation and loss. But hope and love fill these pages, a modern epic set under the pitiless Southern California skies."
--Don Cummings, author of Bent But Not Broken
"William Loving's City of Angles is a big-hearted book, full of memorable characters, crackling scenes, and superbly evoked settings, its well-wrought prose sprinkled with tears and spiced with laughs along the way. An unforgettable debut."
--Charles Harper Webb, author of Sidebend World
