Ben Jones, the down-on-his luck protagonist of James Anderson's haunting debut novel, THE NEVER-OPEN DESERT DINER (Caravel Press; January 2015), finds himself on the losing end of life. A single, thirty-eight year-old broke truck driver, Ben's route takes him back and forth across one of the most desolate and beautiful desert regions in Utah. The orphan son of a Native American father and a Jewish social worker, Ben is drawn into a romance with Claire, a mysterious woman who plays the cello and who is hiding out from her husband.But it is her mysterious appearance seemingly out of nowhere that reignites a decades-old tragedy at the Never-Opened Desert Diner owned by the irascible Walt Butterfield, an embittered and solitary old man.Ben's daily deliveries along the atmospheric and evocative desert highway bring him into contact with an eccentric cast of characters that include not only Walt Butterfield and Claire, but an itinerant preacher who drags a life-sized cross along the blazing roadside, outlaw brothers who live in boxcars mounted on cinderblocks and a pregnant and homeless punk teenager whose survival skills make her an unlikely heroine.On the verge of losing his only source of income, and possibly everything that matters to him, Ben finds himself at the heart and center of a horrific crime committed years ago that ruined lives and threatens to destroy the lives of those left in its wake.“Maybe it was being orphaned and alone all my life, but I always steeled myself for the worst outcome I could envision,” says Ben. “That way I could shrug and be almost happy with anything that fell short of the worst. It was a peculiar life skill and one I had gotten damn good at.” But Ben discovers the desert is relentless in its grip, and that what the desert wants, the desert takes. An unforgettable story of love and loss, Ben learns the enduring truth that some violent crimes renew themselves across generations. Read Less