FLORIDA PALMS

The Outsiders meet Sons of Anarchy in this gripping debut about a group of young men dragged into a drug-running operation.

It's 2009, the height of the Great Recession. Best friends Eddy and Cueball are fresh out of high school and wild at heart, but the economy is in the dumps. With jobs scarce along Florida's Space Coast, they join a furniture moving company run by Cueball's father, a gruff ex-con biker who's supposedly retired from the fast life. But when a mysterious old boss arrives in town, the payload is switched out, and the young men are coerced into shipping a new designer drug up the East Coast.

What is advertised as a bastion of brotherhood and respect quickly spirals into back alley deals, bloodshed, and an all-out turf war that will test the bounds of love and friendship. Enticed by larger paychecks, and fueled by burgeoning drug habits, the young friends find themselves trapped between rank opportunists, warring gangsters, meth zombies, crazed bikers, and a blowgun-wielding hitman, all vying for a shot at the Big Time.

Soaring, ambitious, and deeply humane, Florida Palms is a gritty coming-of-age story with a big heart and an unflinching vision of the violence and inequities facing forgotten communities. In a relentless race against desperate circumstances, the young friends hope to find the escape velocity needed to get out, before they up face down in the muck of the unforgiving swamps.

Joe Pan is the author of five books of poetry and many published short stories. In 2007, he founded Brooklyn Arts Press, publisher of over 70 books, which became the smallest house ever honored with a National Book Award win in Poetry (2016). Joe is also the publisher of Augury Books, recently honored with a Lambda Literary win for Best Book of Lesbian Poetry (2021). Joe's writing has appeared in places such as the Boston Review, Hyperallergic, the New Republic, the New York Times, the Philadelphia Review of Books, and Poets & Writers.