#Extract Bardo By Emily Gallo

Description of the book: After twenty years in prison, an exonerated Luther finds himself once again accused of a murder he did not commit. He flees to New York City where Finn, an old Irish author, teaches him that life is not a predictable, straight path. They embark on a food and drink fueled, cross-country trip where Luther learns to embrace the idea that "life is what happens to you when you're busy making other plans."

Extract from the book:
1

STORM AFTER STORM BORE DOWN ON THE EMERALD TRIANGLE, WASHING AWAY RECENT MEMORIES OF SMOKY, SMOLDERING SUMMERS. The California counties of Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino are rugged but loosely piled---held together by forests regularly stripped for lumber and largely illegal grow sites. Cities famous for rain, such as Seattle, pale in comparison to Garberville's average of sixty-seven inches of rain a year. Locals are used to the Eel River rising quickly and even flooding. It's a tradition, so to speak, to be isolated by mud and high water---one much older than fire.

Winter was once the busy time of year for emergency responders, but that was before Garberville became the largest cannabis-producing region in America and the center of the illegal pot growing industry. The legalization of recreational marijuana in 2016 affected these operations very little, as the illegal trade was deeply entrenched and fees and taxes applied to legal trade were sky high. Growers continued to do as they had done highly successfully for decades. There are as many trimmers as tourists in the summer and fall, but come winter the harvest is over and the workers move on, leaving the region to a very few soggy tourists and locals holding up a skeletal local economy until next season. The spats and gunfire fade into the patter of raindrops, and the sheriff settles into his chair to finish end of year reports. Dispatch fields the usual calls of fences down and wayward cows, of people tired of the isolation and wanting to be rescued, and cars skidding off slick roads. The latter usually doesn't cause as much alarm as loose cattle or being out of milk, but when a driver spun out and came face to face with a skeletal hand sticking out of a muddy embankment, the deputy got a little excited.

Unsurprisingly, the driver was long gone when the deputies arrived on the scene. He was yet another person with something to hide, petty or otherwise. Only plastic shards of a headlight littered the churned up ground beside the road---and that hand, almost as if it was waving down a ride. The hand dangled from arm bones---much more than had been reported, as if the mud was giving birth. The deputies stepped back and studied the scene. What they presumed was a buried full skeleton was outside the fence line above, but since the earth was obviously on the move there was no telling where it originated.

"Ya know who owns this land?"
"Dutch Bogart, I think."
"Good," huffed the senior deputy. "He's less of an asshole than most. Still, you better back me up."
"And leave this unattended?"
"Like we have a choice?"
The other deputy studied the scene for a moment. "I guess it doesn't show unless you know what you're looking for. Better make this quick."
They drove about a quarter mile up the road to a driveway blocked by a gate with a code entry. "Call dispatch and get Bogart's number."

About the author: Emily Kaufman was a girl growing up in Manhattan in the fifties and sixties. In the sixties and seventies, I attended Clark University and lived in San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Los Angeles and Seattle doing the hippie/peace/love/protest thing. In the eighties and nineties, Emily Saur lived in Northampton, MA and Davis, CA and was the more conventional wife, mother of two, and elementary school teacher. In 2006, she retired from teaching and became Emily Gallo when she married David, a professor of economics, and moved to Chico, CA to continue their journey. She started writing screenplays and television and moved into novels. David, Gracie (their Schillerhound), Savali (their cat) and she now divide their time between two and a half acres of gardens, orchards in Chico and a 750 square foot condo on the beach in Carpinteria, CA.

Instagram: @theemilygallo / Facebook: @TheEmilyGallo