Lewis L’Amour

Last seen in 2013’s Lewis and Loeb, Arthur James Lewis returns for another comic misadventure!

In the winter of 2014, Lewis yearns for nothing more than Cicero’s ideal—a garden and a library. Desperate for a peaceful place to complete Carthage: The Sound of Distant Drums, the latest (and longest) of his “magisterial novels of the ancient world”, he finds himself instead harassed and disrespected.

Where to begin? His wife refuses to type up his manuscript. His live-in niece has installed a noisy satellite television to addle the brain of her toddler. The gas company has switched off the heat in an act of shameless revenge. And at a ghastly pop culture convention in blizzard-battered Ohio, Lewis is collectively mistaken for a hack writer of Westerns.

An unexpected windfall of cash allows Lewis to escape to Mendoza, Argentina, where he hopes for a fruitful discussion with the beautiful Camila Weitensteiner, eminent scholar of Ancient Rome, who also happens to manage a small family winery with a guest cottage overlooking the vineyard. For a moment the garden and library seem within reach, but Lewis has arrived during a standoff between the Weitensteiners and the corrupt and monopolistic Quesada family that threatens to become all-out war. Yet again he will learn that a writer’s peace is elusive.

Lewis L’Amour is now out of print.

[Cover image by Simone Artibani @Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons Licence.]