Welcome To Saint Angel tells the story of iconoclastic inventor Al Sharpe and his zany friends and their fight to stop development and the environmental destruction of their California high-desert home. Theirs is a madcap battle against powerful adversaries to protect their town and the land they love from the bulldozers. It’s the story of an indigenous Occupy Wall Street movement wherein everyday citizens from a rural community take on and defeat greedy developers and bankers. Saint Angelinos flirt with violence in their conflicting claims to the land and water rights, but avert disaster. A comic novel with a serious subtext, it addresses suburban sprawl and the reckless development of fragile natural areas, and celebrates community and everyday heroism in the face of calamity.
“In the mildly apocalyptical near future, a community of colorful high desert characters fight off developers and water thieves during CA’s worst drought. These decent whackos transcend their flaws with hilarious courage. Saint Angel is a painful, redemptive belly laugh and well worth it.”
– Doug Peacock, Environmental Activist, Author of Grizzly Years.
Beneath The Coyote Hills explores the influence of choice and chance in our Lives. Do we control our own destiny or is it dictated in part by mysterious forces beyond our control?
“Beneath The Coyote Hills has cost me a sleepless night that I can scarcely afford, and has left me cold with awe at the unwavering skill and subtlety of the narrative. The sheer scope of the author’s imagination, and the almost impossibly delicate poetic weight of his prose, has made the discovery of William Luvaas’s writing one of the genuine joys of my reading-year. He is a remarkable writer, comfortably among the finest at work in America today, and the novel is a towering and maybe career-defining achievement, art of the highest order.”
— Billy O’Callaghan, Irish Book Award-winning author of The Things We Lose, The Things We Leave Behind
The ten stories in Ashes Rain Down: A Story Cycle explore what life might be like after decades of global warming, extreme weather events, epidemics, and collapse of the world economy and social order. They are set in isolated California communities where ordinary people struggle to survive and maintain some semblance of order and meaning in lives stressed by the environmental and social apocalypse occurring around them.
“I remember where I was when I first read “Ashes Rain Down.” I didn’t hear the car repair people call my name. Luvaas presents us with somewhat bizarre characters in a surreal catastrophe, but when he’s done with us–though he’s made us laugh–we find ourselves in their shoes, their crumbling world, and hoping to be as sturdy.”
– Linda Swanson-Davies, Co-Editor Glimmer Train Stories
In these unforgettable stories, Luvaas depicts the struggles of everyday people facing situations far from the ordinary. A Working Man’s Apocrypha is masterful storytelling that breathes life into unlikely but oddly familiar characters in landscapes borrowed from dreams.
“Luvaas manages to make such swerving and impossible lives feel utterly true and real and maybe–incredibly–even normal. ‘Yesterday After the Storm’ is a knockout.”
– Linda Swanson-Davies, Co-Editor Glimmer Train
“In these fierce and eloquent stories, William Luvaas turns ordinary situations into extraordinary and haunting encounters that you won’t soon forget.”
– Alan Davis, Author of Alone With The Owl and Senior Editor of New Rivers Press
Going Under is the haunting tale of a mother’s journey to Bedlam, as she struggles with alcoholism and madness, and the ramifications for her children when she fails to make it back. Jerri Tillotson sinks in a morass of drink, irrationality and despair, threatening to drag her children down with her before she is literally buried alive.
“Luvaas tells a terrible but absorbing story and tells it movingly. I hope this book finds the wide readership it deserves.”
– Larry McMurtry, Pulitzer Prize Winning Author of The Last Picture Show and Lonesome Dove
“A mother drowning in alcohol drags her whole family down in William Luvaas’s powerful novel.”
– New York Times Book Review
The Seductions of Natalie Bach is a compelling first novel about irrepressible Natalie Bach, who is coming of age in the giddy turbulence of New York in the sixties. Kennedy is shot, the Village is pulsing, and Natalie flees her family and upper-middle-class Jewish background to discover life on her own terms. The Seductions of Natalie Bach is the stunning debut of a writer with a fresh and original voice.
“One of the best works of fiction about that pregnant decade [the ‘60’s], comparable to Marge Piercy’s Small Changes and Lisa Alther’s Kinflicks.”
– John Gabree, Newsday
“[Luvaas] tumbles onto the page in an explosion of phrases and descriptions to produce a novel that is not only fun to read but also full of surprises.”
– Arizona Daily Star
OTHER BOOKS:
1989 Report From God’s Country (novel)
1991 Vacationing in the Kingdom of Shame (novel)
2002 The Brothers Hope (novel)
2010 An Unimagined Fate (novel)
2020 The Three Devils (novella)
2021 Last Chance Highway (novel)
WORKS EDITED:
1997 Into The Deep End: The Writing Center Anthology 3
A collection of works by California writers
2021 The Corona Chronicles
Published byCutthroat: A Journal of the Arts
In March 2020, shortly after we were asked to shelter in place due to COVID-19, I suggested to other writers that writing a story or novella about our collective plight would be a good use of our time while we were in lockdown and might help us cope with the angst we were all feeling. Many writers responded to my invitation. The Corona Chronicles anthology brings together some of their works.