Out West - Hardcover

Leebron, Fred

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385484208 ISBN 13: 9780385484206

Publisher: Doubleday, 1996

Synopsis

Benjamin West lost a good job and spent six months in prison - he got caught with a teenage girl and a bag of pot - and now he's driving west, cross-country, to start a new life, working as a night desk clerk at a residential hotel in San Francisco's seedy Tenderloin. On arrival, he meets Amber Keenan, who has abandoned L.A. and her malignant ex-boyfriend, Dean, to work as an adult education teacher for VISTA.
But what starts as a casual relationship grows quickly complicated when the pasts they'd both like to forget overtake the present. Two people wind up dead. And Ben and Amber find they suddenly have a whole lot more in common than they did just a few days ago.
Out West is the story of two perfectly normal, intelligent, attractive, educated people who somehow become killers. It's a dark, slyly humorous story about crossing the line - from stasis to motion, from passing acquaintances to passionate lovers, from innocence to something like guilt.

About this title

About the Author

Fred G. Leebron teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte.

Reviews

In his first novel, Leebron, author of numerous short stories, successfully tackles the uncertain morality and precarious ties shared by two young people whose lives inadvertently turn for the worst. Benjamin West, an aspiring graduate student, is still reeling from the irony of serving a prison term for getting caught with a little dope and a high-school girl; Amber Keenan, overqualified and underpaid, works at a literacy center in San Francisco's shady Tenderloin district. Amber is lying low after a failed attempt at revenge at Dean, her style-maven boyfriend: she turned on every gas outlet in his apartment in the hope that he would light a cigarette when he came home?but it was Dean's new girlfriend, not Dean, who died. Meanwhile, Benjamin finds work as the night desk clerk at the ratty welfare hotel where Amber lives. The two fall into an awkward relationship, sexual but distant, that slips into complicity when Dean returns to avenge himself and Benjamin defends Amber, accidentally killing Dean in the process. Benjamin and Amber forge an odd, necessary bond as they cover their tracks and grapple, alone and together, with the oddities of fate and ill fortune. Leebron's sure feel for detail and a bitter sense of humor keep his tale one level above sordid?but just barely?as his characters struggle, with ample attitude if not much hope of success, against a pretty rotten destiny.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Benjamin is an ordinary young man beginning a new life in San Francisco. After a stretch in prison, he's the night clerk in a seedy Tenderloin hotel. There he meets Vista volunteer Amber, whom he rescues from a violent attacker. She then tells him that the attacker, killed in the struggle, is Dean, her former lover who was seeking revenge because Amber had attempted to kill him. (She succeeded only in killing his other lover.) Two seemingly ordinary young people have become killers. Out West is a curious book. Leebron is a skilled writer, and his story of lowlifes in over their heads is certainly compelling. Yet because he succeeds in his clear intention to make Benjamin and Amber emotional ciphers, the book is ultimately unsatisfying, as we are left unable to understand these ordinary people in extraordinary trouble. Still, Leebron is a writer to watch. Thomas Gaughan

Edition details

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0385484208
• ISBN 13: 9780385484206
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 242