Set in 1938 Los Angeles, ICE PICK is the story of Donovan Daley, Dust Bowl Okie working as an ice man by day and burglarizing rich homes by night. Wanda Kitchen, a radical Jewish union organizer, is in town to repair the local garment workers union. They share an unlikely romance and a Hollywood duplex. But that isn’t enough. They pull a heist against Charles Rucker, a big-shot Nazi sympathizer and oil swindler, and this leads to difficulties. This emotional thriller takes place in that tumultuous era just before World War II, presaging social conflicts that will roil America for decades to come. ADVANCE PRAISE FOR ICE PICK Donnie Dale’s ICE PICK is hardboiled L.A. noir, to be sure. It’s often violent and unflinching. But it’s a novel with a big heart and a good head as the love story of Donovan and Wanda unfolds to a blending of action and ideology that forever changes both characters, and the reader, as well. -Thomas Cobb, author of CRAZY HEART and WITH BLOOD IN THEIR EYES Donnie Dale is a prose magician in his gritty novel ICE PICK. He seamlessly conjures the hard-bitten world of labor activists, brutal gangsters, and entrenched racism and bigotry in 1930s LA, caught in the grips of the Depression. Dale brings two masterfully wrought characters into unlikely union…in this violent, thrilling, and yet, at times, tender novel. -Jeffrey Greene, author of WATER FROM STONE and BEAUTIFUL MONSTERS There are many ways to recover and re-experience the texture and psychology of the recent past. In ICE PICK, Donnie Dale fashions a novel that fuses the long Southern California tradition of minimalist fiction with contemporary docu-drama. -Kevin Starr, University of Southern California Donnie Dale’s last novel was A HUNTER’S FIRE. He worked for many years as a freelance writer and for the movie and television industries. His website is DonnieDale.com.
