Dive Bartender

"""Painting a gritty and visceral picture of life on the road, specifically the rugged west, author T.K. O'Neill crafts a haunted hero in his latest novel, Dive Bartender: Flowers in the Desert.

Frank is itching for a new chapter in Denver, but there aren't enough mountains in Colorado to keep old habits and bad luck from catching up. Navigating a seedy minefield of manipulation, desperation, desire, and even hope, this wandering rogue of a protagonist finds himself in strange company, compelled to stay just a bit longer in decadence and pleasure, and delaying his California dreams one day at a time.

Love, loss, brotherhood, and purpose clash in a timeless examination of freedom through a drug-addled lens. With a clever and original flourish for simple, unexpected descriptions, the prose hums along at an even clip, occasionally taking time to wax poetic, à la Kerouac, with the urgency in Frank's mind and movements reminiscent of Sal Paradise, if not Dean Moriarty.

Comparisons aside, this book is far from derivative; it is a refreshing homage to beatnik life, telling an accessible story with a familiar lesson - you can't go home again, and home is wherever you make it."" — Self-Publishing Review

I'm not bothered in the slightest by gritty novels (a bluntness in language, sex, violence, drugs), but they aren't novels I naturally gravitate toward. So I was both shocked and thrilled when I realized, only a few chapters into T.K. O'Neill's Dive Bartender: Flowers in the Desert, that Frank Ford's blunt grittiness wasn't just a literary choice. It was a clever and calculated decision regarding a character that turned out to be one of the most likable protagonists I have ever encountered in a novel before. Ever! For all Frank's flaws (which are many, and he'll tell you all about them, bluntly, in the book), I adored him! I couldn't get enough! I loved him so much I completely ignored his mysterious and questionable past as I was drawn ever deeper into a novel filled with rational but misguided decisions, unfortunate events, and increasingly twisted and intersecting story lines.

Dive Bartender: Flowers in the Desert was a naughty, but utterly delectable treat for me that I devoured from cover to cover. Normally I might be compelled to say it's not for the politically correct or easily offended. But that would have been before I'd read it, and enjoyed it so much, and came here to unrepentantly announce as much in this review. Yes, this book is blunt. There's language, sex, violence, and drugs, and I loved every second of it! The entire book is fantastic, filled with weaving mysteries, nagging doubts, and loads of suspense. Phenomenal on every level! My favorite was still Frank though, who wasn't a saint and wasn't a hero, but carried the book in flying colors by being a regular guy dealing with a dark past, self-doubts, and, perhaps to his surprise, a chivalrous streak that might just carry him into a new future and love. - Masa Radanic, The International Review of Books"