Nancy Moore
The Friends of SaddleBrooke Libraries Fall Author Luncheon will be held in the SaddleBrooke Clubhouse from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on Friday, November 2, 2018. Tickets go on sale in the SaddleBrooke Clubhouse lobby between 9:00 a.m. and noon on Monday, September 17. In-person sales continue at the same time and place through Friday, September 21. The $29/person ticket includes lunch of spinach and swiss cheese quiche (or stuffed portabella mushroom for vegetarians) with side salad and chocolate cake. 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.
He has written four books of Old West history 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.