Salt Lick

by Brian Ames

Consider a common item of the salt lick. Name a rural town after it. Put in authority a megalomaniacal mayor. Populate it with foothills people bent to do his bidding. Set in the Cascades, Salt Lick shakes and burns as their lives carom from the orderly to the boundaries of control and beyond. Whether Salt Lick’s citizens survive the resulting mayhem brews a black comedy part David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, part Russell Banks’ Trailer Park.

226 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007