CROSSING

The Crossing is a powerful and haunting love story of surprising discovery set in Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen during Prohibition. Irish-born Johnny Flynn, a former British soldier, is banished from his homeland and sent to America on a ship so riddled with disease that he realizes the voyage was meant to murder him. When he survives the trip, the captain forces him to walk the plank into the Hudson River. Miraculously, an Irish gang, the Swamp Angels, rescues Johnny and gives him a job running whiskey in Hell’s Kitchen just as Prohibition makes liquor a hugely profitable, dangerous business. 

Ashby Jones’s passion is writing literary fiction that attempts to understand mankind’s never-ending battles with irony, tragedy, blatant contradiction, and the anomalies of love. Such is the focus of The Crossing, a stand-alone sequel to The Angel’s Lamp, his first novel. Ashby studied under such notables as William Hoffman, a best-selling author, and years later at U.C.L.A. under Leonardo Bercovici, a highly regarded screenwriter.