Headlock: A Novel

Headlock: A Novel
ISBN-10
156512748X
ISBN-13
9781565127487
Series
Headlock
Category
Fiction
Pages
265
Language
English
Published
2000-05-12
Publisher
Algonquin Books
Author
Adam Berlin

Description

This “powerful debut novel” follows two cousins on a dangerous road trip from New York to Las Vegas (Booklist, starred review). Odessa Rose is the kind of guy who gives the term “hair-trigger temper” a whole new meaning. His violent nature has, more than once, produced blood. Dess was a college wrestling star who blew it all just shy of graduation when he lost a match and beat another wrestler to a pulp. Since his inglorious dismissal from college, he’s been parking cars for a living in downtown New York. It’s there that his cousin Gary finds him and lures him away to Las Vegas. Gary has some uncontrollable impulses of his own: hugely overweight, he’s a compulsive gambler, playing fast and loose with thousands of dollars. But now there’s an enforcer tailing him, a sunglasses-wearing thug who has no trouble breaking hands, arms, legs. Gary needs protection in Vegas. Who better than his strong, volatile cousin Dess? What do you do when you’re at a crossroads in life? When you want to be a different person than the one who’s made all the wrong choices? When your strength has become your greatest weakness? Headlock is “a brutal and potent debut novel . . . A grim, suspenseful drama to the end” (Valley Advocate). “Odessa Rose has a violent temper and a wrestler’s strength, both inherited from his Russian immigrant grandfather, having skipped the generation of his father the economics professor . . . Gary’s uncontrolled appetites and Dess’s uncontrolled anger add to the tension of the trip, which is really about self-examination and redemption. The cousins struggle with the Rose family legend of a grandfather who fought hard and worked hard for the sake of the family, a family from which they are alienated. A powerful debut novel with fascinating characters.” —Booklist, starred review

Other editions

  • Headlock
    • 2000-05-12
    • 265 pages
    • Paperback
    • Algonquin Books
  • Headlock
    • 2020-05-29
    • 258 pages
    • Paperback
    • Independently Published
  • Headlock
    • 2015-12-06
    • 300 pages
    • Ebook
    • WildBlue Press
  • Headlock
    • 2015-02-10
    • 216 pages
    • Ebook
    • Open Road Media

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