Big Machine

'A world where faith cannot pay its bills and greed is the only force in which anyone can reliably believe.' --TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT

'A rich, textured story structured like a crime thriller and told in vivid but unshowy prose. Thematically meaty...recommended.' --SFX

'Beautiful.' --VANITY FAIR

'Unruly and entertaining...a monumental dreamwork.' --LOS ANGELES TIMES

'The first great book of the next America.' --Mos Def

'A truly phantasmagorical experience that is quite unlike anything you will have encountered before.' --Barry Forshaw, Crime Time

'A transcendent and provocative book that is wildly original and completely absorbing' --Katherine Tomlinson, California Literary Review

'Big Machine transcends the boundries of standard literary fiction and defies readers' expectations at every turn.' --Stephenie Harrison, BookPage

'Like his spiritual forebears, Chester Himes and Nelson Algren, he speaks for the unsung so we can hear their voice. Listen' --Cathi Unsworth, THE GUARDIAN, March 25th, 2011

LaValle writes like Gabriel Garcia Marquez mixed with Edgar Allan Poe. He's written the first great book of the next America. --Mos Def

Ricky Rice is a middle-aged hustler with a lingering junk habit, a bum knee, and a haunted mind. The sole-survivor of a suicide cult, he spends his days scraping by as a porter at a bus depot in Utica, New York. Until one day a letter arrives, reminding him of a vow he once made and summoning him to Vermont to fulfill it.