Shaky Town

LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 TOURNAMENT OF BOOKS"L.A. is where you reside. Shaky Town is where you live."

Welcome to Shaky Town, a place invisible on maps and found only in the secret heart of its citizens.

In this masterwork of panoramic style, Lou Mathews-a former mechanic and street racer—weaves together the tragedies and glories of one eastside neighborhood in the 1980s. From a teenage girl caught in the middle of a gang war, to an Irish priest who has lost his faith and hit bottom, the characters in Shaky Town live on a dangerous fault line but remain unshakable in their connections to one another.A luminous achievement of peerless authenticity, Shaky Town captures the grit and gold of working-class Los Angeles and lays down Matthews's marker as one of the city's great chroniclers.