Falling Onto Cotton

In this crime & coming-of-age novel, an innocent restaurateur’s life spins out of control when his dying uncle, a Milwaukee crime lord, taps him to become the next Don. This genre-defying novel is laced with humor, heart, and 1980s nostalgia.

“Riveting and hard to put down…mixes many facets but does so with a bartender’s attention to the perfect drink of action, surprise, evolution, and revised life connections. It’s highly recommended reading for crime story fans who like their tales both literary and thought-provoking.” –D. Donovan, Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

Ever since the murder of his fiancée, Charles “Chance” McQueen’s life has taken a wrong turn. Once a budding musician on the brink of stardom, Chance now exists on an unfulfilling diet of liquor-store scotch and toxic relationships. The only things that give him purpose are running his restaurant and looking after Winnie—a fatherless teen on the cusp of adulthood, experiencing the exquisite pain of first love.

To complicate matters further, Chance is the last surviving relative of Don Carmelo—Milwaukee’s most feared crime lord—and when he is tapped to take over the family business, Chance faces a choice: give in to a life of criminality that he’s tried so desperately to avoid, or face certain death at the hands of a rival.

Haunted by his past and terrified for his future, Chance is at a crossroads. Torn between the life he wants and that which he is living, will he be able to re-shape his destiny, or will he lose his fractured soul to a criminal empire built on murder?

Brilliantly evocative of life at the tail end of the 80s, Falling onto Cotton blends the teenage angst of Pretty in Pink with the grit of Goodfellas. It is a razor-sharp, richly atmospheric, and deeply moving portrait of a boy becoming a man, a man finding his code, and the dark underbelly of organized crime surrounding them both.

Matthew E. Wheeler grew up in Wisconsin, where the winters can last a lifetime-and epic novels and movies of the 1970s and 1980s became his escape. After working for over twenty years in the restaurant and bar industry, Matthew turned to writing (with detours through rehab, marriage, and fatherhood along the way). He lives just outside of Seattle with his family, and is a member of the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. To find out all you ever wanted to know about Matthew and listen to mixtapes from Falling onto Cotton, please visit matthewewheeler.com.