The Drift - Hardcover

Ridley, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0375411828 ISBN 13: 9780375411823

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 2002

Synopsis

Tormented by his past, drugs, and an advancing dementia, Charlie ekes out a perilous existence on the railroads, until he is asked to find the missing teenage niece of the man who had taught him how to survive the rails, and follows a twisting trail of lies, deceit, hate, hopelessness, and murder that takes him to a dramatic confrontaion with his own humanity. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

John Ridley, who lives in Los Angeles, is the author of four highly regarded novels, and a former producer on NBC’s Third Watch. He wrote and produced the film Undercover Brother, wrote the story for Three Kings, and wrote and directed Cold Around the Heart. His novel Stray Dogs was made into the movie U Turn, directed by Oliver Stone. He is also a regular commentator for National Public Radio.

From the Inside Flap

He was Charles Harmon, a black man living white and living well beautiful wife, German car, big house in an upper-upper-middle-class suburb of Los Angeles.

He is Brain Nigger Charlie, a train tramp eking out a ragged existence on the railroads, leaning on drugs to keep him from thinking about everything he had, everything his creeping dementia has forced him to run from.
Charlie s been asked a desperate favor: find the seventeen-year-old niece of the man who taught him how to survive the rails a girl lost somewhere on the High Line, the corridors of racist hate along the tracks of the Pacific Northwest. Charlie has little hope of finding her alive, but the request is an obligation he can t refuse. The search is a twisted trail that leads from Iowa to Washington State, mixing lies and deceit, hate and hopelessness, and brutal, stubbornly unsolved murders. All of which Charlie is prepared to meet in kind. What he isn t prepared
for is a path that will eventually lead him back to what he thought no longer existed his own humanity though the toll may turn out to be his life.

At once stunningly visceral and psychologically complex, furiously paced and deeply empathic, The Drift is John Ridley s most ambitious, most galvanizing novel yet.

Edition details

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0375411828
• ISBN 13: 9780375411823
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 269