The Passion of Saint-Jablonski

by Andrew Mondry

Andrew Mondry’s brilliant, knowing, and wildly funny first novel The Passion of Saint-Jablonski is a book for and about America—not the country we want, or pretend to have, but the one we’ve mad, poor, rich, hustling, suffering, and trying for it all with a mix of hope and desperation. Mondry is the real deal—like Russell Banks meets Carl Hiaasen. Think of the tender, comic songbook of John Prine, the dreary kindness of the New England soul, and that one friend who kept threatening a move to Florida. A great novel by a great writer.

- Dan Bevacqua, author of Molly Bit

What happens when the American Dream collides with the internet age and explodes into chaos?
Stosh Saint-Jablonski, a washed-up golf prodigy, is stuck in a crumbling Florida condo complex that looks like a failed Disney World attraction. When the power-mad condo president vanishes with the community's money, Stosh is thrust into leadership—managing conspiracy theorists, wellness grifters, and internet prophets who make his old golf buddies look like Nobel laureates.

As summer heat turns brutal, so does the crypto schemes masquerade as enlightenment, parking lot holy wars erupt, and a dating algorithm might be government spyware. Armed with nothing but a nine-iron and his emotional support boar Gator, Stosh must hold his fractured community together before his own sanity becomes the next casualty.

Part Catch-22 , part Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas , this merciless satire skewers our extremely online culture with dark wit. One man's desperate attempt to maintain order becomes every modern person's battle to stay grounded in an unhinged world.

If you've ever scrolled until reality bent, this book will feel too real and too funny to put down.

331 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 21, 2025

About the author

Andrew Mondry was born and raised in Western Massachusetts, where he still lives with his wife and two daughters. His short fiction has appeared in Jerry, The Nude Bruce Review, and Weird Lit Magazine. The Passion of Saint-Jablonski is his first novel.

Reviews

[Hardcore Book Club · Rating 5 out of 5]

"It was in those moments he remembered where he was-in wild, wild Florida. He remembered the first time he saw a water Moccasin wiggle across the lake; the first time he saw a gator creeping along the water hazard on the Ridge's par-three eleventh hole. Florida still belonged to the wild. It was everywhere, peering from behind every bush, and lurking just beneath the gentile water of every swamp, lake, and pool."

The Passion Of Saint-Jablonski is like Thomas Pynchon writing in Harry Crews country if both were terminally online. Stosh Saint-Jablonski is an ex-golf hopeful turned reluctant president of a fading Florida condo complex, hooked on weed and reels and struggling to hold it together. This book has condo politics and conspiracy theories, crypto, cryptids, Insta-shamans and spiritual grifters, general societal collapse, and a mysterious, possibly malignant black ooze. It perfectly replicates the feeling of doom-scrolling while half out of it at an ungodly hour. Is this our world now? Is this just Florida?

[Eric Weintraub · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the funniest books I've read in recent memory. Mondry's Stosh Saint-Jablonski delivers hilarious and sharply observed musings on nearly every page. I laughed out loud many times reading this -- something I almost never do when I read. Yet at the center of the book is a very flawed, very lost protagonist you nevertheless want to root for and can't help but relate to. I think this is a major author discovery from Silent Clamor Press. I'm looking forward to what Mondry writes next.

[Emily Coughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was funny, intelligent and extremely well written! I can’t wait to see what Andrew does next!