[ARC] [PDF] [June-August 2026] [Literary Fiction] [Pier 45 - Scott Alderman] ( > Likes and Comments
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Scott wrote: "Pier 45 is coming out on September 4, 2026 from JournalStone Publishing, and I am looking for readers (if you want to leave a review that's great). Click this link to download the PDF: https://dl.b..."Hey Scott! I came across your post about Pier 45 and it sounds like a powerful and compelling story.
I'm also currently helping launch an upcoming personal finance book called Fire Your Lazy Money by Markus Heitkoetter, and I'm looking to connect with fellow authors who may be interested in supporting each other's launches.
I'd be happy to read Pier 45 and leave an honest Amazon review if you'd be interested in receiving a complimentary copy of Fire Your Lazy Money and leaving an honest Amazon review in return.
If that sounds like something you'd be interested in, I'd love to connect and exchange details.
Thank you!
"Pier 45 is a powerful, moving, important novel. A blend of The Basketball Diaries, Angels in America, and Requiem for a Dream, Scott Alderman has written a brutal, honest story that is not without humor and hope. 10/10."—Richard Thomas, Bram Stoker, Shirley Jackson, and Thriller Award finalist
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When a drag queen rescues a brutalized teenage hustler in 1981 New York City, it ignites a decade-long saga of heroin, AIDS, murder, and supernatural reckoning—told by a child of Holocaust survivors who carries the dead on his tattooed arm, and who is learning that just surviving isn’t always enough.
West Village. Summer 1988. A city in financial ruin, on its way to breaking a homicide record, collapsing under the weight of AIDS and crack, dying with no end in sight. In a forgotten strip of the West Village waterfront, abandoned piers sit in disrepair, decaying from neglect, but providing shelter for disenfranchised queer youth of color. On Pier 45, the Christopher Street pier, a drag queen named Mother looks after her “children,” a group of hustlers and addicts that form the basis for her crime family.
It is into this world that Seth Horwitz stumbled one night seven years earlier, sixteen years old, orphaned, addicted, brutalized to the point of death—he finds his way to the pier, and to Mother Margaret. A child of Holocaust survivors trying to make it on the street, his encounter with Mother begins a saga that takes him deep into a world of prostitution, heroin, crime, and murder. As AIDS began to ravage the West Village, Seth’s world collapsed under the weight of illness and addiction, but he survived when few did; the last one standing.
Now clean and sober, his tightly constructed world of Narcotics Anonymous meetings and work at an AIDS hospice across the street from the piers—his penance for surviving—is beginning to unravel. He’s burned out by the unending loss, he relapsed, he is second-guessing the Auschwitz survivor tattoos that cover his left arm, and he is haunted by surreal hallucinations that put him in harm's way and stretch his understanding of reality.
From memorable encounters with Rudolph Nureyev, Maya Angelou, and Allen Ginsberg, to the violence of the Tompkins Square riot, Pier 45 spans a tumultuous decade in New York City when a generation was wiped out and gentrification changed the heart of the city.