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Shop nowBig Maria
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Learn moreThere’s gold in them thar hills—or more precisely, in Arizona’s Chocolate Mountains, where one hundred years ago a miner stashed a king’s ransom of the stuff. But times have changed. The world has changed. And now the Chocolate Mountains are the home of the largest military artillery range in the world.
Harry’s living on disability and getting liquored up and beaten down. Frank’s a feisty old-timer battling cancer and a domineering daughter. And Ricky’s a good kid in a bad spot, doing everything for family. Together they’re staking what little they have left on a dangerous quest to the Big Maria Mine—and the gold that can offer them a new beginning.
Unfortunately a meth-dealing biker wants a piece, a trigger-happy AWOL soldier wants to play chicken in a live minefield, two stubborn burros want to go home, a starving mountain lion wants his dinner, and the US Army wants to rain on our heroes’ parade with real bombs.
When you’re all out of crazy ideas, you’ve got to try the stupid ones.
Johnny Shaw is the author of the novel Dove Season: A Jimmy Veeder Fiasco and editor of the online fiction quarterly Blood & Tacos.
Johnny received his MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA and over the course of his writing career has seen his screenplays optioned, sold, and produced. For the last dozen years, Johnny has taught screenwriting. He has lectured at both Santa Barbara City College and UC Santa Barbara.
Johnny lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife, artist Roxanne Patruznick.
Reviews
“Johnny Shaw has an incredible talent for moving from darkness to hope, from heart-wrenching to humor, and from profane to sacred. His latest, Big Maria, is an adventure story that’s equal parts Humphrey Bogart and Elmore Leonard, with just a little bit of the Hardy Boys thrown in. I loved every page.” —Hilary Davidson author of The Next One to Fall
“I loved every page of Big Maria. You don’t often read a gutbustingly funny book that manages to maintain its fundamental seriousness and bad-ass sense of plot. This proves what many of us suspected after ‘Dove Season,’ that Johnny Shaw is one of the majors already.” —Scott Phillips author of The Ice Harvest and The Adjustment
“…Imagine the following: pretend the late Donald Westlake sketched out his wildest, craziest, funniest Dortmunder novel, and then instead of writing it himself, asked gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson to actually write it. You would then have Big Maria, one of the funniest, wildest, comic-caper adventures we have stumbled across in a long time.” —Suspense Magazine
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