Shaky Town - Hardcover

by Lou Mathews (Author)

In Shaky Town, Lou Mathews has written a timeless novel of working-class Los Angeles. A former mechanic and street racer, he tells his story in cool and panoramic style, weaving together the tragedies and glories of one of L.A.'s eastside neighborhoods. From a teenage girl caught in the middle of a gang war to a priest who has lost his faith and hit bottom, the characters in Shaky Town live on a dangerous faultline but remain unshakable in their connections to one another.

Like Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, John Steinbeck's Cannery Row, Katherine Ann Porter's Ship of Fools, Gloria Naylor's The Women of Brewster Place, and Pat Barker's Union Street, Shaky Town is the story of complicated, conflicted, and disparate characters bound together by place.

Author Biography

Lou Mathews is the author of L.A. Breakdown and a longstanding instructor at UCLA Extension's acclaimed Creative Writing program. His stories have been published in ZZZYVYA, New England Review, Tin House, Black Clock, Paperback L.A., and many fiction anthologies. Mathews is also a journalist, playwright, former restaurant critic, and passionate cook. He has received a Pushcart Prize, a Katherine Anne Porter Prize, and an NEA Fiction Fellowship, and is a recipient of the UCLA Extension Outstanding Instructor Award.