It’s always fun to read the first work of a promising young talent before anyone else, and then force it onto others as your own discovery -- as if you actually have some stake in the writing of it. I love that.
That’s what New Voices Month at the LA Books Examiner is all about. For the last few months, I intentionally sought out four unique new voices to share with the community this month, two nonfiction and two fiction authors, whose personal stories are as fascinating as their writing.
Up first was former University of Tennessee football player turned author Chris Treece, who’s new nonfiction book Driven is helping readers find their passion and change their business and personal lives for the better.
This week I’ll focus on fiction writer and photographer Gint Aras and his debut novel Finding the Moon in Sugar, a funny and beautifully written picaresque novel that you don’t want to miss.
In Finding the Moon in Sugar, we meet 20-year Andrew "Nate" Nowak, the likable pot-head narrator and part-time drug dealer from Berwyn, Illinois, who escapes his needy mother and meth-addicted sister only to be seduced by Audra, a gorgeous Lithuanian internet bride who happens to be the wife of one of his American "clients".
Infatuated and thoroughly obsessed with Audra, Nowak will sell everything he owns, except his dog, to follow Audra abroad into a world of illness, regret, and sex -- and a surprising romance he never expected. What follows are Nowak's hilarious and tragic adventures through Vilnius, Lithuania and back to Bloomington, Indiana and a surprising conclusion you won't see coming.
Finding the Moon in Sugar is what I call a good old-fashioned blue-collar novel. Gint Aras' provocative humor and a great ear for dialogue and dialect are just bonuses -- the kind of memorable features that will have your forcing this new find onto your friends and loved ones as yet another example of your literary foresight, your latest discovery.
Read the full interview with Gint Aras at La Books Examiner.
