Description
Book SynopsisThe tale of a stone-cold frontiersman blasting across his beloved Texas highways in an attempt to retain his sense of daring and independence among friends, family, bookies and under-reported enemies.
Beneath the Sands of Monahans introduces Archie Weesatche, a hard working orphan who’s recently sold his oil field hot shot company, Keep On Truckin’. With money in his pocket and time on his hands, Archie launches a long-planned Tour of Texas with best friend Okinawa Watkins, betting with a colorful cast of hand-picked boosters and bookies on high school and college football games.
Enter Mexican heiress Josefina Montemayor, who convinces her long-ago lover that Archie’s the only man she trusts to raise the $650,000 she needs to release millions in unrecovered cartel cash.
Set in a map’s worth of Texas locations, this quest narrative explores cultural minefields, the precarious nature of oilfield booms and busts, and the tricky world of cash money gambling during a legendary winning streak.
Trade Review"As perhaps the most misunderstood and maligned state in the union—a whole other country, the ad campaigns remind—Texas can lead its writers into easy caricature and superficial exploration. But in
Beneath the Sands of Monahans, Charlie Alcorn goes deep. His vision and depiction of twenty-first-century Texas, its culture, criminals, and economies, suffuses each page. With a rich and contemporary cast of characters and a plot as equally engrossing as it is breathless, he anchors his book to Archie Weesatche—ex-jock, entrepreneur, gambler, and dreamer—who is equal parts Jeff Rink and Duane Jackson and a creation all Alcorn's own. You may not sanction every decision Archie makes on his wild and frightening ride, but you'll certainly fall for his reckless charm. This is Alcorn's Texas, and boy does he wring out of it a novel like no other."
—Tom Williams, author of Don't Start Me Talkin', an NPR Favorite Novel of 2014
