Author Leo W. Banks
Fall Author Luncheon November 2
Nancy McCluskey-Moore
Plan now to attend the Friends of SaddleBrooke Library’s fall Author Luncheon at the SaddleBrooke Clubhouse from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Friday, November 2, 2018. Tickets will go on sale on Monday, October 1 between 9:00 a.m. and noon in the SaddleBrooke Clubhouse lobby. Seating is limited to 180.
The luncheon will feature local author Leo W. Banks whose book Double Wide won the 2018 Best Debut Novel and Best Western Contemporary Novel from the Western Writers of America. The book features fastball phenom Prospero Stark who has retreated to a trailer park in the scorching Arizona desert after his baseball career cratered in a Mexican jail. While living in peaceful anonymity with a collection of colorful outcasts, someone leaves his former catcher’s severed hand on his doorstep. Stark teams up with beautiful, hard-living reporter Roxanne Santa Cruz, who keeps a .380 Colt and a bottle of Chivas in her car, to uncover his friend’s fate. It’s a dangerous pursuit that pits them against a ruthless gang of drug-dealing killers.
Banks graduated from Boston College and earned a master’s degree from the University of Arizona, where he later taught writing. His articles have appeared in USA Today, Newsday, Miami Herald, National Review, National Geographic Traveler, Sports Illustrated, Wall Street Journal and many others. He has been a correspondent for the Los Angeles Times and the Boston Globe.
Banks is the author of four Old West history books for Arizona Highways publishing and co-wrote a book about the Grand Canyon. His book about the saguaro cactus won’t stop selling. He has won thirty-eight statewide, regional and national journalism awards and, today, writes a column for True West magazine. Double Wide is his first novel.