Szarotka

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As a boy, Spider's life changes forever when he is sexually assaulted by three high school girls during a family trip to the Jersey Shore. Since then, Spider has navigated the peaks and valleys of his life while carrying the weight of his past trauma-alone, always alone.

In his hometown Chicago, Spider brawls with Detroit Lions fans and smokes darts with the homeless, has messy hookups on rooftops and drives in fast cars with Tommy Northside. Throughout, Spider stumbles closer and closer to the edge. When he finally seems to find love, he pushes it away.

After the end of his marriage, Spider surrenders to a dead-end factory job, where he reflects on the strange and violent images that haunt his dreams and waking memories. His mother, a Polish immigrant, is the only person who can still see the potential he can't seem to actualize. To her, he remains a szarotka, a beautiful mountain flower.

Playing with the dream-like montage of human memory, Adam J. Galanski-De Leon's debut novel explores how the past, present, and future bleed together to form the self. Through the second-person mosaic of Spider's personal history, Szarotka searches for meaning in the darkest moments of our lives.