The Last King of California By Jordan Harper

This stirring and brutal bildungsroman tells the story of young Luke Crosswhite, who after years apart from his criminal family returns to their flock – deep in the California desert. Luke’s father is serving time for a murder that Luke himself witnessed; now, his uncle vies for power and rival biker gangs encroach on the family’s various criminal enterprises.

A sensitive boy grown hard man, Luke navigates the vicious pressures of “home” and the loyalties to his old friend, Callie, who has hatched a scheme with her boyfriend, Pretty Baby, to escape the control of the gang called the Combine. Hanging over these desperate, lonesome parties is the gang’s motto, tattooed indelibly across the heart: Blood Is Love.

Now available for the first time in America, The Last King of California is a story of the West unlike any you will read.