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Gangsterland #3
The Low Desert Lib/E: Gangster Stories
Raymond Carver meets Elmore Leonard in this extraordinary collection of contemporary crime writing set in the critically acclaimed Gangsterland universe, a series called gloriously original by the New York Times Book Review. With gimlet-eyed cool and razor-sharp wit, these spare, stylish stories from a master of modern crime fiction assemble a world of gangsters and con men, of do-gooders breaking bad and those caught in the crossfire. The uncle of an FBI agent spends his life as sheriff in different cities, living too close to the violent acts of men; a cocktail waitress moves through several desert towns trying to escape the unexplainable loss of an adopted daughter; a drug dealer with a penchant for karaoke meets a talkative lawyer and a silent clown in a Palm Springs bar. Witty, brutal, and fast-paced, these stories expand upon the saga of Chicago hitman-turned-Vegas-rabbi Sal Cupertine--first introduced in Gangsterland and continued in Gangster Nation--while revealing how the line between good and bad is often a mirage.
Audio CD
First published February 2, 2021
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About the author
Tod Goldberg
34 books569 followersTod Goldberg is the New York Times bestselling author of sixteen books of fiction, notably the acclaimed Gangsterland quartet: Gangsterland, a finalist for the Hammett Prize; Gangster Nation; The Low Desert, a Southwest Book of the Year; and Gangsters Don’t Die, an Amazon Best Book of 2023 as well as a Southwest Book of the Year. Other works include The House of Secrets, which he co-authored with Brad Meltzer, and Living Dead Girl, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His short fiction and essays have been anthologized widely, including in Best American Mystery & Suspense and Best American Essays, and appear regularly in the Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and Alta. Tod Goldberg is a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of California, Riverside, where founded and directs the Low Residency MFA program in Creative Writing & Writing for the Performing Arts. His next novel, Only Way Out, will be released this fall from Thomas & Mercer.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 118 reviews
May 9, 2023
Aptly titled, Goldberg's The Low Desert takes us to the empty world out past Palm Springs, a world of lonely roads, forgotten buildings, abandoned lives, and dead inland seas. It's the edge of the universe, a place where bitter wounded folks come to lay down and rot away. There's not much out here, but abandoned dreams, epitomized by the developments that were started and never finished around the Salton Sea, an inland riviera where nothing lives. It's a place where you go when you're at the end of your rope. Reno, Vegas, Hollywood, are the past, better left behind to trailer parks, cheap motels, burned out hustlers looking for a last place to survive. Goldberg offers us a dozen crime stories set for the most part in this wasteland. Some characters reappear again. Some names crisscross the stories. Hard, tough, bittter, and just what that doctor ordered.
March 12, 2021
I’ve always wondered just exactly who these unknown writers are that co-author (ghostwrite) novels with bestselling authors. I assumed they were either slow-witted relatives of the bestselling author (maybe a heavy drinker) in need of a job that were being hooked up in the family business, or captives that James Patterson has chained in his dank basement. Either way, they must be lacking the talent to publish novels on their own if they are letting an established author take credit for their work, right? And while this Patterson captive theory seems to ring true, (after all who can’t picture Jimmy P. pacing up and down his clammy subterranean lair, swinging his large bull whip menacingly and forcing an assembly line of sweaty writers tethered in front of typewriters to churn out short-chaptered mysteries?), I may have to reevaluate my thoughts after reading The Low Desert by Tod Goldberg. Goldberg has been a coauthor himself with serial co-writer Brad Meltzer. However, he is definitely not that untalented relative getting a job with Uncle Brad so he can move out of his Mom’s garage. And while I honestly am not entirely 100% positive Goldberg is not chained up in Meltzer’s basement, I am willing to let that go too (they are both adults so who am I to judge?) because this collection of short stories is extremely good!
The subtitle for The Low Desert is: gangster stories. But that is selling these fantastic tales short. This would be like saying Hawthorn’s The Scarlet Letter is just about the alphabet. Or that The Monster at the End of this Book by Grover is just about a monster who strangely enjoys creeping around at the end of books (thereby totally missing the timely theme of man’s inability to understand his own identity). No, Goldberg’s short tales are so much more than gangster stories. They are the stories of everyone who laughs, cries, and toils for a better life. Yes, many of the characters in The Low Desert are criminals, are the victims of criminals, or even investigate criminals. But that is all just dressing. The characters in Goldberg’s stories experience terminal medical diagnoses. They are attempting to come to grips with loss or failing at life. It can be pretty heavy stuff. My favorites were “Mazel” about an FBI agent coming to grips with her terminal cancer, “Goon Number 4” about the life of a minion, and “Rag town.” But I found all enjoyable and interesting. If Brad Meltzer is reading this, and you do in fact have Goldberg chained up, please give him an extra slice of moldy bread, refill his rusty cup with murky water and tell him he did a nice job with this one!
The subtitle for The Low Desert is: gangster stories. But that is selling these fantastic tales short. This would be like saying Hawthorn’s The Scarlet Letter is just about the alphabet. Or that The Monster at the End of this Book by Grover is just about a monster who strangely enjoys creeping around at the end of books (thereby totally missing the timely theme of man’s inability to understand his own identity). No, Goldberg’s short tales are so much more than gangster stories. They are the stories of everyone who laughs, cries, and toils for a better life. Yes, many of the characters in The Low Desert are criminals, are the victims of criminals, or even investigate criminals. But that is all just dressing. The characters in Goldberg’s stories experience terminal medical diagnoses. They are attempting to come to grips with loss or failing at life. It can be pretty heavy stuff. My favorites were “Mazel” about an FBI agent coming to grips with her terminal cancer, “Goon Number 4” about the life of a minion, and “Rag town.” But I found all enjoyable and interesting. If Brad Meltzer is reading this, and you do in fact have Goldberg chained up, please give him an extra slice of moldy bread, refill his rusty cup with murky water and tell him he did a nice job with this one!
April 23, 2023
4.5 Stars for The Low Desert: Gangster Stories (audiobook) by Tod Goldberg read by Johnny Heller.
This is a set of short stories set in the sun baked desert of the southwest. The gritty stories are about criminals and a couple of the people trying to tracking them down. Some of the characters pop up in different stories so they are loosely connected.
This is a set of short stories set in the sun baked desert of the southwest. The gritty stories are about criminals and a couple of the people trying to tracking them down. Some of the characters pop up in different stories so they are loosely connected.
January 26, 2021
Short stories that are tough, gritty and hardcore. Stories of gangsters, cons, gamblers, murderers et. al. Each story does well as a well rounded standalone. If you like stories about the underground life in Vegas, California, Arizona this is a good read for you of true gangster stories.
November 28, 2021
The majority of the stories in this collection are unique, engaging with distinctive characters and they just make you crave more after they're over. I found only a few of the last ones more slow paced and not as interesting.
February 19, 2021
Ignore the mystery thriller tab from the publishers, and the talk of gangsters, crime, and noir that fill the reviews. There are some crimes and some criminals and even some gangsters, but this is a collection of stories that is mostly about unhappy people desperately struggling to make sense of their broken lives set against the bleak backdrop of the Low Desert in California. It is no accident that some of the stories take place in on near a once promising resort complex investment on the edge of the Salton Sea that now lies deserted and desolate. The stories are standalone, but characters drift in and out of them. Morris Drew, a law enforcement officer, is forced to make ethical decisions in one story, and is reminiscing about his dead wife while sharing his final months with a fellow terminal cancer sufferer in another. Tania, a waitress, bemoans the loss of her daughter who probably walked out on her years earlier in one story, and visits her rightfully convicted husband in prison in another. Apart from the first story, which despite a few clever lines, seemed pretty run of the mill, though I may need to reassess that after finishing the collection, the stories are just amazing. They are so good that I have difficulty deciding my favorites, though ‘Salt’ and ‘Pilgrims’ are right up there.
April 10, 2021
Somehow, to go on and on about the wondrousness of THE LOW DESERT, to not let its wondrousness speak for itself, would seem to dishonor the light touch and deft wit of Tod Goldberg’s writing.
It’s impossible to be too dazzled by the sheer inventiveness of Goldberg’s story premises or the smiling savagery of his infinitely quotable prose. Suffice it to say that the sum of all of these qualities leave you with a feeling of how sparse and starved of imagination most crime-fiction stories pegged to crime-fiction story tropes are, how mentally fast asleep they are in comparison to this amassed evidence here of the gleeful, restless contrariness of Goldberg’s crazy ability to amaze and delight.
And to confound expectations. Time after time, you’ll read the stories in THE LOW DESERT and think: “Who would even think of that?”
A lowlife thief turned killer who also happens to be a talented rock star … at least in a certain inland loop of the Southern California karaoke circuit. A high-end, jet-setting mercenary-for-hire who decides to give up the killing life for classes at a community college. An FBI agent who learns she’s going to die young develops an entirely healthy obsession with her final resting place. A onetime star in the law-sprinkler-technology industry is forced to work a murderously dark side hustle. A middle-aged cocktail waitress obsessed with her adopted Russian teen girl, who ran away years before.
Who would even think of that? Tod Goldberg would. As only he could come up with this stiletto-blade-sized bits of savage human insight:
“He had a hustle he liked to do where he’d bet people that he could make them cry and then he’d bust out ‘Brick’ by Ben Folds Five and every girl who ever had an abortion would be in a puddle. It didn’t make him proud, but he had bills to pay.” (“The Royal Californian”)
“Shane isn’t much of a fighter. He’s the kind of person who will stab a guy, though. Put a screwdriver in someone’s eye. You’re either a pussy or you’re not. Shane probably is one, but he’s not squeamish around blood and that helps.” (“The Royal Californian”)
“Woodrow East was the vice president of Claxson Oil, the kind of guy who told you to call him Woody but didn’t mean it.” (“The Low Desert”)
“THE RIVIERA HOTEL was located on the north end of Palm Springs, about an hour from the Salton Sea. It was the kind of hotel Elvis stayed in when he was visiting. The kind of hotel where you stayed so you could tell people you’d stayed there.” (“The Low Desert”)
“Tania drops off three White Russians, five beers, and a Tom Collins to a kid who is clearly underage, since no one under seventy would have the audacity to order a Tom Collins and no one over twenty-one would even consider uttering it around a pack of their friends.” (“Palm Springs”)
“When she was young, if there was a chance to f*ck up, Tania usually took it, just to see what it felt like. And the result was that she felt, after forty-seven years, that she’d lived, even if she didn’t really have much to show for it.” (“Palm Springs”)
“He’d been raised well enough to wait until a woman was inside her home before driving off, but not well enough to be doing something better with his life than bartending at an Indian casino, and that alone made Tania sad for him.” (“Palm Springs”)
“Most of the time, everything went fine. The other 35 percent of the time, yeah, maybe he shot a guy, slit a couple throats, broke arms and legs, gouged out eyes, set fire to a mound of corpses, but that was growing rarer these days.” (“Goon Number Four”)
“’Webster. Blake Webster.’
“’You’ll need a different name for radio,’ she said. ‘Your name makes you sound like that guy you went to high school with who still lives in the same town and is now assistant manager at Del Taco.’” (“Goon Number Four”)
“She was allowed to tell people she was an FBI agent. Only the covert parts of her job were classified. But in Las Vegas, where half the people were about an inch away from a RICO charge, it was like telling someone in East Germany that you worked for the Stasi.” (“Mazel”)
“It occurred to Cooperman that working in academia and working in the illegal drug trade weren’t all that different: people expected a certain level of punctuality, which he thought was a really bent business model. If any two fields demanded fluidity, it was academia and drug trafficking.” (“Professor Rainmaker”)
“I tell you, there’s something about the energy surrounding a dead body, you know? Like a dog, it can just walk by, take a sniff, and keep going. Us, we got all that empathy. What I wouldn’t give to not have that.” (“The Salt”)
Every single page in this story collection is filled with astonishing newness, the delicious products of a restless and talented mind unsatisfied with the slightest whiff of the semi-routine or the second-rate. To read Tod Goldberg is to be happily trapped inside the mind of a writer who trusts their own instincts, their powers of observations, to take them wherever they want to go. To not force them into proven commercial formulas. To trust that maybe they’re creating a brave new non-formula. And to be just fine with whatever happens. As you will be when you read Tod Goldberg’s stories.
It’s impossible to be too dazzled by the sheer inventiveness of Goldberg’s story premises or the smiling savagery of his infinitely quotable prose. Suffice it to say that the sum of all of these qualities leave you with a feeling of how sparse and starved of imagination most crime-fiction stories pegged to crime-fiction story tropes are, how mentally fast asleep they are in comparison to this amassed evidence here of the gleeful, restless contrariness of Goldberg’s crazy ability to amaze and delight.
And to confound expectations. Time after time, you’ll read the stories in THE LOW DESERT and think: “Who would even think of that?”
A lowlife thief turned killer who also happens to be a talented rock star … at least in a certain inland loop of the Southern California karaoke circuit. A high-end, jet-setting mercenary-for-hire who decides to give up the killing life for classes at a community college. An FBI agent who learns she’s going to die young develops an entirely healthy obsession with her final resting place. A onetime star in the law-sprinkler-technology industry is forced to work a murderously dark side hustle. A middle-aged cocktail waitress obsessed with her adopted Russian teen girl, who ran away years before.
Who would even think of that? Tod Goldberg would. As only he could come up with this stiletto-blade-sized bits of savage human insight:
“He had a hustle he liked to do where he’d bet people that he could make them cry and then he’d bust out ‘Brick’ by Ben Folds Five and every girl who ever had an abortion would be in a puddle. It didn’t make him proud, but he had bills to pay.” (“The Royal Californian”)
“Shane isn’t much of a fighter. He’s the kind of person who will stab a guy, though. Put a screwdriver in someone’s eye. You’re either a pussy or you’re not. Shane probably is one, but he’s not squeamish around blood and that helps.” (“The Royal Californian”)
“Woodrow East was the vice president of Claxson Oil, the kind of guy who told you to call him Woody but didn’t mean it.” (“The Low Desert”)
“THE RIVIERA HOTEL was located on the north end of Palm Springs, about an hour from the Salton Sea. It was the kind of hotel Elvis stayed in when he was visiting. The kind of hotel where you stayed so you could tell people you’d stayed there.” (“The Low Desert”)
“Tania drops off three White Russians, five beers, and a Tom Collins to a kid who is clearly underage, since no one under seventy would have the audacity to order a Tom Collins and no one over twenty-one would even consider uttering it around a pack of their friends.” (“Palm Springs”)
“When she was young, if there was a chance to f*ck up, Tania usually took it, just to see what it felt like. And the result was that she felt, after forty-seven years, that she’d lived, even if she didn’t really have much to show for it.” (“Palm Springs”)
“He’d been raised well enough to wait until a woman was inside her home before driving off, but not well enough to be doing something better with his life than bartending at an Indian casino, and that alone made Tania sad for him.” (“Palm Springs”)
“Most of the time, everything went fine. The other 35 percent of the time, yeah, maybe he shot a guy, slit a couple throats, broke arms and legs, gouged out eyes, set fire to a mound of corpses, but that was growing rarer these days.” (“Goon Number Four”)
“’Webster. Blake Webster.’
“’You’ll need a different name for radio,’ she said. ‘Your name makes you sound like that guy you went to high school with who still lives in the same town and is now assistant manager at Del Taco.’” (“Goon Number Four”)
“She was allowed to tell people she was an FBI agent. Only the covert parts of her job were classified. But in Las Vegas, where half the people were about an inch away from a RICO charge, it was like telling someone in East Germany that you worked for the Stasi.” (“Mazel”)
“It occurred to Cooperman that working in academia and working in the illegal drug trade weren’t all that different: people expected a certain level of punctuality, which he thought was a really bent business model. If any two fields demanded fluidity, it was academia and drug trafficking.” (“Professor Rainmaker”)
“I tell you, there’s something about the energy surrounding a dead body, you know? Like a dog, it can just walk by, take a sniff, and keep going. Us, we got all that empathy. What I wouldn’t give to not have that.” (“The Salt”)
Every single page in this story collection is filled with astonishing newness, the delicious products of a restless and talented mind unsatisfied with the slightest whiff of the semi-routine or the second-rate. To read Tod Goldberg is to be happily trapped inside the mind of a writer who trusts their own instincts, their powers of observations, to take them wherever they want to go. To not force them into proven commercial formulas. To trust that maybe they’re creating a brave new non-formula. And to be just fine with whatever happens. As you will be when you read Tod Goldberg’s stories.
February 24, 2021
“Raymond Carver meets Elmore Leonard...,” said The New York Times of this collection of mostly connected (pardon the pun) gangster desert stories, and it wasn’t wrong.
Think Palm Springs, Vegas, the Salton Sea and so many haunted locales in between. Think cunning gangsters, Chicago mob families, hardened cops, and a-snap-your-heart-in-two story about a missing child and the desperate mother/cocktail waitress she left behind that moves throughout the collection for an incredibly satisfying, if tragic, payoff.
Tod’s a friend, but I’m not exaggerating even a little when I say this is the most enjoyable collection of short stories I’ve read in a long time. Of course, the short story is my favorite for its tendency and bravery to deeply explore the joys and tragedies of our human condition in even the most mundane situation. But, what Tod’s done here! Examining the intricacies of the heart and mind under the duress of that crazy-ass gangster shit that we love to eat up. It’s so good!
Oh, and the dialogue! Snappy, smart, tough guy talk you never want to end.
Yep, Five Big Gun Stars for this one! And not the shitty Smith and Wesson stars. “Two hundred bucks at Walmart.” I’m talking the real deal. Real gangster stars!
Think Palm Springs, Vegas, the Salton Sea and so many haunted locales in between. Think cunning gangsters, Chicago mob families, hardened cops, and a-snap-your-heart-in-two story about a missing child and the desperate mother/cocktail waitress she left behind that moves throughout the collection for an incredibly satisfying, if tragic, payoff.
Tod’s a friend, but I’m not exaggerating even a little when I say this is the most enjoyable collection of short stories I’ve read in a long time. Of course, the short story is my favorite for its tendency and bravery to deeply explore the joys and tragedies of our human condition in even the most mundane situation. But, what Tod’s done here! Examining the intricacies of the heart and mind under the duress of that crazy-ass gangster shit that we love to eat up. It’s so good!
Oh, and the dialogue! Snappy, smart, tough guy talk you never want to end.
Yep, Five Big Gun Stars for this one! And not the shitty Smith and Wesson stars. “Two hundred bucks at Walmart.” I’m talking the real deal. Real gangster stars!
February 10, 2021
Fun, gritty and so well written. This book reminded me of Broken by Don Winslow. Highly recommended.
February 9, 2021
Beautiful. Brutal. Poignant. Just a masterful collection.
February 15, 2021
This was a 24 hour read, and already a contender for my favorite book of 2021. Rich, funny, emotional, and unforgettable.
It's not a feel good book. It doesn't give one any sense of hope. But it's remarkable.
It's going to be a book I revisit sooner rather than later.
It's not a feel good book. It doesn't give one any sense of hope. But it's remarkable.
It's going to be a book I revisit sooner rather than later.
May 19, 2021
Tod Goldberg is a master of language and these gritty, sometimes violent but also humorous stories are a joy to read/listen. The humanity in each of the characters comes through in dark ways but reflect people trapped but trying to better their lives often through illegal ways.
February 16, 2021
Come on universe, I need an ARC!
April 5, 2022
This took me forever to read which is not a reflection of these snarky, sharp, gory, smart stories, but a reflection of me and my troubled relationship with the short story genre. I love Tod Goldberg's Gangsterland novels and several characters from the novels get their stories told in this collection. I have listened to the Literary Disco podcast for years and Tod along with his cohosts, Julia and Ryder convinced me to read this collection. Listen to their podcast and let them convince you.
June 25, 2023
A compelling collection of short stories - some at the beginning linked to some at the end - and at least one with some laugh-out-loud humor. Good character development. Solid plots. Well described places which are a character, too. An easy-to-read writing style. The gritty and desolate desert reflects the lives of many people who inhabit these tales.
January 26, 2021
1/26/2020 4,5 stars. Really terrific. Full review tk at CriminalElement.com.
June 25, 2025
I needed to read a book set in a desert so I asked chat gpt to recommend a book, it gave me this one. It’s several short stories, some interwoven with others. The short story format was quick to read but it felt kinda like the author just threw together random stuff he’d worked on and then submitted it as a a book, but maybe that’s how a collection of short stories is supposed to be
October 9, 2023
As any other short story collection, some were better than others. But unlike other short story collections, the first story in this collection is more than enough to feel satisfied with the time spent with the whole book.
The Royal Californian is a short story where every word counts. The prose are crisp and the action is fast paced and interestingly unexpected. I read it more than once, not only to enjoy it, but to see how it was done.
Interestingly, The Royal Californian appeared also in the best American mystery and suspense collection, 2022 under the title a career spent disappointing people.
The Royal Californian is a short story where every word counts. The prose are crisp and the action is fast paced and interestingly unexpected. I read it more than once, not only to enjoy it, but to see how it was done.
Interestingly, The Royal Californian appeared also in the best American mystery and suspense collection, 2022 under the title a career spent disappointing people.
March 10, 2021
The Low Desert – Gangster Stories by Tod Goldberg is a collection of twelve tales of assorted characters found mostly in California, centered around the Salton Sea, Las Vegas, or connecting areas.
Most of the characters—both decent or criminal, and some more likable than others—seem to be trying to extricate themselves from their current situations. Fortunately, the humans in these human stories are developed in such a way as to not be exaggerated caricatures that would render the stories meaningless. Further, Goldberg also captures the environments of his tales in vivid and palpable detail. Readers can almost feel the heat, smell the stink of the Salton Sea, inhale the desert dust, and feel the grit between one’s fingers while reading these stories.
While the opening tale, The Royal Californian may suggest stories in the collection will have determined and certain ends to those involved, further reading reveals many stories, like life, tend to end in either ambiguous or incomplete ways.
Other stories, like The Low Desert, The Last Good Man, and The Salt, deal with how later in life people are often haunted. Haunted by things like aging, death, past experiences, and the things one may have been forced to do. This retrospection may be just as daunting as the experiences carried out in one’s life. And as these characters are haunted, they still scratch on in the best way possible, with hopes the continued struggle may offer some sort of respite, solace, or redemption.
Stories like The Spare, Professor Rainmaker, and Ragtown introduce us to characters who may think of themselves a bit smarter than everyone else, and in moving forward with solutions that just may not work out too well for them.
The Low Desert expertly captures the environment of hard lands, hard people, and the breaking of spirits.
This review was originally published at MysteryandSuspsense.com.
February 23, 2021
Remembering “the ghosts of another life”: Dark Disturbances in a Deadly Desertscape
“The desert covers everything in these parts in a fine dust the color of dried marrow.”
* * *
A dozen gritty, bleakly-humorous, and unexpected shorter tales comprise Tod Goldberg’s latest, The Low Desert: Gangster Stories. I should add that this is my first reading of any of Goldberg’s work, although these pieces connect to his Gangster Nation and Gangsterland work, too. In The Low Desert, we find compelling stories about men and women with fear and pride in equal turns. I don’t know much about the West Coast, so these pieces feel particularly unreal to me, in a good way, like mist rising from distant mirages where you’re not quite sure what’s true and what’s fiction. Goldberg writes with sharp, colloquial, and snappy prose. An occasional gem—adage-like and crystalline—rises from the debris of danger, incriminations, and death. For instance, in the story “Mazel,” a young FBI agent diagnosed with cancer looks into the sky and ignores the moon, as “[s]tars had a much more compelling story. They were proof that dead things could still be remembered.”
Truly, with sundry timelines and eras represented, The Low Desert dips into the past, present, and future lives of people and places. And not all the tales are about “crimes” and “gangsters”: we find drifters surging with loneliness and apprehension as often as we find the grifters. The portrait of the region, too, complements the often-barren-feeling lives with its enormity and stretches of the unknown beyond. I kept reading and imagining these scenes in a sepia-tone, halfway between a classic film noir and today’s realities. I also kept thinking about Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and while there isn’t a single human central figure here, the mystery of the desert, and the force that attracts and compels so many lost people there, is certainly absorbing.
Moreover, as you read on, it becomes progressively more satisfying to watch the “pieces” (the individual stories) of The Low Desert slide together to create a larger, atmospheric work, and this is aided by some interlocking tales that show certain characters at different stages in their lives, the whereabouts of one woman’s adopted daughter whose sudden disappearance plagues her, or even the story of a family member who has been unable to avoid his father’s criminal past and has spurred a legacy of “Family Business,” if you know what I mean. However, while it appears these interlocking tales display character-development and evolving stories that feel ripe enough for their own respective novels, Goldberg’s collection feels deeply-anchored in, as he writes in “The Salt,” the “trauma of memory.” One thing is for sure: don’t look for happy endings. And be ready for some surprises. One great surprise: that you can feel empathy for the wanderers here, the isolated former cocktail waitress who marries an incarcerated man she barely knows. The sprinkler-system professional who winds up teaching college courses while moonlighting as a no-good. And Morris Drew, whose rise and fall in law-enforcement is entwined with three different wives from three very different times in his life, each of them taken or touched by Death.
“But of course people are always dying,” Goldberg writes in “The Salt.” That is the truth of this short story collection. People die because they are murdered, or they die of old age, or they die of disease, or they’re merely existing and already living a waking death. They watch other people die. They imagine other people dying. They die because they are associated with the wrong people. They imagine themselves dying. Some even contemplate suicide. Catalyzing such morbidity is the fact that there is a lot of sickness, such as cancers and mental and moral illness. It’s all seemingly bound up with the desert, part of it a site of World War II test-dumping. Uranium is in there somewhere. Developers come and try to revitalize this decaying place but it’s an “environmental disaster” and the people out there face “innovative cancers, endocrinological disorders, and intestinal bacteria only found in Chernobyl,” as the author describes.
Truly, while some authors try to find beauty in the ordinary, in The Low Desert, Goldberg aims to find the dark in the commonplace. Here are ordinary people left in desperately extraordinary circumstances, people who try to climb themselves out of a cesspool of sin and seem to land in the sucking quicksand of something worse. To put it frankly, these are not happy tales. Depressing, isolating, and bleak, they are as stark and unknowable as the desert stretching before us, covering all the secrets of the dead bodies and dead dreams. As Goldberg writes in one story, this place, with the incongruous presence of the Salton Sea that seems to purge up bodies at every point, is a “rotting sea [of] ghost and sand,” as well as a “great mirage: a sea where no sea should be.” By transference, then, there are dead bodies where no dead bodies should be. There is pain, hurt, and loss that overwhelms. Yet—these characters manage to soldier on and survive, choosing life when possible, even when it is difficult, or feels like a prison sentence. We feel for them—we really do. Some of the stories and characters feel more well-rounded and even likeable than others, but there’s a fierce-yet-easy creativity here. For example, in “Goon Number Four,” we get the life-and-death daily activities of that eponymous figure in a way I felt would make a great sitcom. What happens when people are so practiced in casual warfare—when people become their jobs—that that is the only lens through which they can see all else? It is gruesome humor at its finest. And it cuts to the bone because while we readers may not be hitmen or snipers or drug dealers and that like, we certainly and too often become mechanized, reduced to what we do rather than who we are.
The bigger question, of course, is to what extent does location affect body, soul, and mind. It clearly does, and the desert here, with its mystery and magnetism, its majestic sites yielding to mundane and morbid ones, once again takes on the dual role of protagonist and antagonist. At the end of it all, you leave Tod Goldberg’s The Low Desert thinking about who you are and how you’ve become it—and how the places you’ve lived have shaped your experience one joy or tragedy, one gain or loss at a time.
N.B., and as a warning: if you’re averse to profanity and some gruesome descriptions (there’s a relatively high corpse-count here, including the bodies of young children), this is not the story collection for you. And if you’re looking for happily-ever-after, move along.
“The desert covers everything in these parts in a fine dust the color of dried marrow.”
* * *
A dozen gritty, bleakly-humorous, and unexpected shorter tales comprise Tod Goldberg’s latest, The Low Desert: Gangster Stories. I should add that this is my first reading of any of Goldberg’s work, although these pieces connect to his Gangster Nation and Gangsterland work, too. In The Low Desert, we find compelling stories about men and women with fear and pride in equal turns. I don’t know much about the West Coast, so these pieces feel particularly unreal to me, in a good way, like mist rising from distant mirages where you’re not quite sure what’s true and what’s fiction. Goldberg writes with sharp, colloquial, and snappy prose. An occasional gem—adage-like and crystalline—rises from the debris of danger, incriminations, and death. For instance, in the story “Mazel,” a young FBI agent diagnosed with cancer looks into the sky and ignores the moon, as “[s]tars had a much more compelling story. They were proof that dead things could still be remembered.”
Truly, with sundry timelines and eras represented, The Low Desert dips into the past, present, and future lives of people and places. And not all the tales are about “crimes” and “gangsters”: we find drifters surging with loneliness and apprehension as often as we find the grifters. The portrait of the region, too, complements the often-barren-feeling lives with its enormity and stretches of the unknown beyond. I kept reading and imagining these scenes in a sepia-tone, halfway between a classic film noir and today’s realities. I also kept thinking about Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio and while there isn’t a single human central figure here, the mystery of the desert, and the force that attracts and compels so many lost people there, is certainly absorbing.
Moreover, as you read on, it becomes progressively more satisfying to watch the “pieces” (the individual stories) of The Low Desert slide together to create a larger, atmospheric work, and this is aided by some interlocking tales that show certain characters at different stages in their lives, the whereabouts of one woman’s adopted daughter whose sudden disappearance plagues her, or even the story of a family member who has been unable to avoid his father’s criminal past and has spurred a legacy of “Family Business,” if you know what I mean. However, while it appears these interlocking tales display character-development and evolving stories that feel ripe enough for their own respective novels, Goldberg’s collection feels deeply-anchored in, as he writes in “The Salt,” the “trauma of memory.” One thing is for sure: don’t look for happy endings. And be ready for some surprises. One great surprise: that you can feel empathy for the wanderers here, the isolated former cocktail waitress who marries an incarcerated man she barely knows. The sprinkler-system professional who winds up teaching college courses while moonlighting as a no-good. And Morris Drew, whose rise and fall in law-enforcement is entwined with three different wives from three very different times in his life, each of them taken or touched by Death.
“But of course people are always dying,” Goldberg writes in “The Salt.” That is the truth of this short story collection. People die because they are murdered, or they die of old age, or they die of disease, or they’re merely existing and already living a waking death. They watch other people die. They imagine other people dying. They die because they are associated with the wrong people. They imagine themselves dying. Some even contemplate suicide. Catalyzing such morbidity is the fact that there is a lot of sickness, such as cancers and mental and moral illness. It’s all seemingly bound up with the desert, part of it a site of World War II test-dumping. Uranium is in there somewhere. Developers come and try to revitalize this decaying place but it’s an “environmental disaster” and the people out there face “innovative cancers, endocrinological disorders, and intestinal bacteria only found in Chernobyl,” as the author describes.
Truly, while some authors try to find beauty in the ordinary, in The Low Desert, Goldberg aims to find the dark in the commonplace. Here are ordinary people left in desperately extraordinary circumstances, people who try to climb themselves out of a cesspool of sin and seem to land in the sucking quicksand of something worse. To put it frankly, these are not happy tales. Depressing, isolating, and bleak, they are as stark and unknowable as the desert stretching before us, covering all the secrets of the dead bodies and dead dreams. As Goldberg writes in one story, this place, with the incongruous presence of the Salton Sea that seems to purge up bodies at every point, is a “rotting sea [of] ghost and sand,” as well as a “great mirage: a sea where no sea should be.” By transference, then, there are dead bodies where no dead bodies should be. There is pain, hurt, and loss that overwhelms. Yet—these characters manage to soldier on and survive, choosing life when possible, even when it is difficult, or feels like a prison sentence. We feel for them—we really do. Some of the stories and characters feel more well-rounded and even likeable than others, but there’s a fierce-yet-easy creativity here. For example, in “Goon Number Four,” we get the life-and-death daily activities of that eponymous figure in a way I felt would make a great sitcom. What happens when people are so practiced in casual warfare—when people become their jobs—that that is the only lens through which they can see all else? It is gruesome humor at its finest. And it cuts to the bone because while we readers may not be hitmen or snipers or drug dealers and that like, we certainly and too often become mechanized, reduced to what we do rather than who we are.
The bigger question, of course, is to what extent does location affect body, soul, and mind. It clearly does, and the desert here, with its mystery and magnetism, its majestic sites yielding to mundane and morbid ones, once again takes on the dual role of protagonist and antagonist. At the end of it all, you leave Tod Goldberg’s The Low Desert thinking about who you are and how you’ve become it—and how the places you’ve lived have shaped your experience one joy or tragedy, one gain or loss at a time.
N.B., and as a warning: if you’re averse to profanity and some gruesome descriptions (there’s a relatively high corpse-count here, including the bodies of young children), this is not the story collection for you. And if you’re looking for happily-ever-after, move along.
June 16, 2021
I picked this up randomly, knowing nothing of the author. This may well be the best collection of short stories I've ever read - I certainly feel that way currently - each one a deep character sketch with alternating gut punches and pathos, but also a grim humor throughout. I was excited to discover that these are set in the universe of Goldberg's prior two novels, which I immediately picked up and read. I liked those quite a bit less, perhaps just by comparison to how hard the collection hit me. I've since read the short stories another two times and look forward to the universe continuing in future novels. My one complaint is that a couple of my favorite characters don't seem to appear in the earlier novels, though maybe I just missed them. Anyway, five stars. Excellent stuff.
December 26, 2020
Unforgettable characters, dangerous dudes, hilarious insights. Welcome to the warped mind of Tod Goldberg. The Low Desert bridges his Las Vegas gangster novels Gangsterland and Gangster Nation with the literary crime stories in his collection Other Desert Cities. While the banter crackles like Elmore Leonard, Goldberg has a lyrical edge, like David Goodis. Goldberg can convince you that a place is terrible (i.e. Las Vegas, the Salton Sea) but at the same time create a yearning to go there, and see the squalor with one's own eyes.
February 14, 2021
Bleak. Grim. If you are looking for a hero's journey in these stories...fugedaboutit. Wiseguys , grifters, losers. Kind of like the Trump administration.
There were a couple of characters you rooted for, especially the sheriff who was featured in three stories (very nice story arc btw) but for the most part the cast of these stories were just sad.
All the stories were very written and well paced. Overall a real solid selection as long as you don't mind the relentless dark themes.
There were a couple of characters you rooted for, especially the sheriff who was featured in three stories (very nice story arc btw) but for the most part the cast of these stories were just sad.
All the stories were very written and well paced. Overall a real solid selection as long as you don't mind the relentless dark themes.
February 8, 2021
I hadn't read any of the author's other work, so I came into this blind. I really loved it, read it all in a day and a half.
I'll be going back to read the other gangsterland stuff now.
I'll be going back to read the other gangsterland stuff now.
June 15, 2021
Goldberg continues his witty way with some of the characters we saw in the 'Gangsterland' books that came before. Will anticipate the next one, for sure, since the fascinating rabbi seems to just keep on ticking...
October 28, 2020
The Low Desert by Tod Goldberg is a collection of noir short stories that are both standalone tales and interconnected segments. Because the stories all take place within a certain kind of world in a general area there is crossover with some characters appearing briefly in other character's stories and even reappearing on their own at different times in their lives.
Every so often a reader will come upon a book that makes them think, "Wow! How have I not heard of this author before?" The Low Desert is that kind of book, Tod Goldberg is that writer. I don't know why I've never read anything he's written before but I fully intend to correct that situation as soon as possible .
Deep, thoughtful, often brooding. Tales of people who are living life the best way they can as opposed to living their best lives. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good tale that doesn't necessarily come all wrapped up in a bow with a pretty ending.
Contains adult language and violence.
***I received a free digital copy of this title from NetGalley.
Every so often a reader will come upon a book that makes them think, "Wow! How have I not heard of this author before?" The Low Desert is that kind of book, Tod Goldberg is that writer. I don't know why I've never read anything he's written before but I fully intend to correct that situation as soon as possible .
Deep, thoughtful, often brooding. Tales of people who are living life the best way they can as opposed to living their best lives. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good tale that doesn't necessarily come all wrapped up in a bow with a pretty ending.
Contains adult language and violence.
***I received a free digital copy of this title from NetGalley.
February 4, 2021
This a a great collection of (mostly) Coachella Valley-based short stories. Several are connected to others, tied together with the same characters or the same crime organization. Most take place at least partly in the Coachella Valley, where it isv ery hot. Coachella Valley blinding sunshine hot. Salton Sea stinky hot. And while these are solid crime stories, they also explore grief and regret, aging and moving on, remembering different times in the same place. Several of them are quite heartbreaking.
All of these stories are good. My favorites were Goon Number Four, and the various stories involving Tania.
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Thanks to NetGalley and Counterpoint Press for providing me with an egalley of this book.
All of these stories are good. My favorites were Goon Number Four, and the various stories involving Tania.
———
Thanks to NetGalley and Counterpoint Press for providing me with an egalley of this book.
July 13, 2021
I need to write a more thoughtful review for this at some point. But Tod Goldberg is a fucking brilliant writer. And while the stories are billed as “gangster stories,” they are so much more. Goldberg knows how to write about our fucked up world in a way that gets to the bone of what it means to be human. These stories are all “bangers.” They’re engaging and readable and so very fucking beautiful. Some of them are gut punches, but we need voices like Goldberg’s in these times. I am sad that I finished this book and will dip back into them often.
October 12, 2021
The majority of these stories take place on the other side of legal, with settings ranging from the Salton Sea to Palm Springs, Las Vegas and Reno. This is a super atmospheric piece if you listen to the audiobook, as the narrator has a gritty voice that pairs well with the content. That being said, I found many pieces had relatively weak endings and having finished the book, not very many stand out. "The Spare" was my favorite, by far.
Edit - been thinking about this more. Bumping up +1 stars!
Edit - been thinking about this more. Bumping up +1 stars!
February 26, 2021
I would give Tod Goldberg's collection of stories, The Low Desert, ten stars if I could. Twenty! The stories, which MUST be read in order, are hardcore and funny and heartbreaking. Aside from the brilliant writing--he has an insane ear for voice--the stories weave together to create a whole--Cubist even--world in and around desert communities in eastern CA and Las Vegas. Like these misunderstood cities, there's so much more to the characters who live there--Goldberg gives each such depth it's like he set out to fill in the blanks. What's behind the sorrow in that aging cocktail waitresses eyes? What drives a hired killer to go back to school? How many times as that security guard killed? And what did that do to his soul? I marveled at his sentences, laughed at his jokes, and cried at his stark yet empathetic understanding of humanity. Can't recommend highly enough.
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