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Left on Rancho

A Novel

Francesco Paola

For fans of Tod Goldberg’s Gangster Trilogy and Tim O’Brien’s America Fantastica, this contemporary noir follows a burned-out tech entrepreneur into the Wild West of California cannabis and the converging worlds of contraband weed and illegal immigration.

It’s October 2019 and Andrew Eastman, a tech entrepreneur with a bank account running on fumes, has just ridden into Adelanto, a desolate outpost in the Mojave Desert, to help an old friend. The ask: turn around a fledgling legal cannabis operation.

Andrew, the outsider, asks too many questions—about the viability of the legal market, the inoperative surveillance cameras in the factory, and the dominance of the illegal trade—and makes himself a target. Undeterred, he journeys from Adelanto to West Hollywood to the underbelly of Los Angeles on a hunt for contraband. When he lands at the intersection of cannabis and immigration, and as bodies pile up around him, he is left with one last decision—one that will forever change him.