Summary
One of the most celebrated and controversial authors in America delivers his first novel--a sweeping chronicle of contemporary Los Angeles that is bold, exhilarating, and utterly original.
Dozens of characters pass across the reader's sight lines--some never to be seen again--but James Frey lingers on a handful of LA's lost souls and captures the dramatic narrative of their lives: a bright, ambitious young Mexican-American woman who allows her future to be undone by a moment of searing humiliation; a supremely narcissistic action-movie star whose passion for the unattainable object of his affection nearly destroys him; a couple, both nineteen years old, who flee their suffocating hometown and struggle to survive on the fringes of the great city; and an aging Venice Beach alcoholic whose life is turned upside down when a meth-addled teenage girl shows up half-dead outside the restroom he calls home.
Throughout this strikingly powerful novel there is the relentless drumbeat of the millions of other stories that, taken as a whole, describe a city, a culture, and an age. A dazzling tour de force, Bright Shiny Morning illuminates the joys, horrors, and unexpected fortunes of life and death in Los Angeles.
William W. Johnstone was born in Southern Missouri on October 28, 1938. He quit school when he was fifteen to join a carnival, but went back and finished high school in 1957. He worked as a deputy sheriff, spent time in the army, and then went into radio broadcasting, where he worked for sixteen years.
He started writing in 1970, but was his first book, The Devil's Kiss, was not published until late 1979. He wrote over 200 books during his lifetime including the Ashes series, Code Name series, Mountain Man series, The First Mountain Man series, and Eagles series. Two of his books, Eagle Down and Dagger, were written under the pen name of William Mason. He died on February 8, 2004 at the age of 65.
(Bowker Author Biography)
