Street Legal

A righteously satisfying read of a thriller, metaphysical novel, and screwball comedy, from the author of The Bear Comes Home.

With the twists, turns, and smash-ups of a thriller, the sudden depths of a metaphysical novel, and the fizz of a screwball comedy, Street Legal is high entertainment and a righteously satisfying read, from the author of the greatest novel ever written about a saxophone-playing bear.

Street Legal features an old-time skunk dealer, sniffing the new breezes, wants to open an Old-Time Grass Business Theme Park with rides and a disco. His foot soldier, a strapping, confused kid who might be on the spectrum. A frustrated cop who isn't allowed to collar anyone important because the town needs the business who consoles himself by trying to make a last-chance bust and grab some of the action. A slick, unsettling stranger buying up properties under cover for a major tobacco company but really out for himself. A Tibetan Buddhist lama from New Jersey who sounds like Tony Soprano when discoursing on the dharma who finds his disciple, a wry, reticently sexy earth mother wracked with concern for the wayward young man who is her son.

Rafi Zabor was born and raised in Brooklyn and lives there now, but in between has lived in various parts of England and Scotland, as well as Paris, Istanbul, and Jerusalem. His experience writing for Musician magazine--along with playing the drums here and there--led to the composition of his novel The Bear Comes Home, which won the PEN/Faulkner Award.