Winners

by Eric B. Martin

Chimney sweep Shane McCarthy has three great loves in a whip-smart wife named Lou, pickup basketball, and his booming hometown, San Francisco. While Lou hunts easy millions at the height of the dot-com frenzy, Shane fills his extra hours searching for a troubled player from his weekly hoops game—a twenty-year-old named Sampson who’s disappeared, leaving only a bulging duffle bag behind. Following a trail that winds through Pacific Heights parties and the projects, Shane unravels a mystery that links his wife’s new world to the missing Sampson and his family.
Evoking the glitter of The Great Gatsby and the pulsing streets of Clockers, Winners is both a chronicle of a surreal historic moment and a gripping portrait of a man caught between two worlds. A novel of startling scope and ambition, Winners reaches into the hearts and minds of would-be millionaires and ghetto toughs, businesswomen and single moms, gym-rat moguls and pissed-off slackers, all grasping for the gold ring of something better.


Eric B. Martin grew up in Maine, studied in North Carolina and Texas, and lives in San Francisco. MacAdam/Cage will publish his third novel in 2006.

361 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Cathe Fein Olson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Several different stories going on here that came precariously together in the end, but the real reason I kept reading was the main character, Shane-a chimney sweep who is obsessed with playing basketball even after being badly injured several times. Shane is struggling to maintain a relationship with a mostly absentee wife and also looking for a young basketball player from the projects who disappeared without explanation.