Here on Earth : A Novel

Fresh out of prison and looking to make amends to his son, Tommy Turner finds himself tangled up with a New Orleans mafia boss hellbent on revenge and a past that just won't leave him be.

After a two-year stint in Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola for drug dealing, recovering addict and gambler Tommy Turner just wants to reconcile with his ex-wife and young son, Jamey, and get himself right with God. Haunted by how his father’s destroyed football career, failed marriage, and untimely death affected his childhood, Tommy vows to do better by Jamey.

Enter Tommy’s childhood friend: Glenn Rosen. Glenn has stepped up to serve as surrogate father to Jamey in Tommy’s absence, and it’s brought joy and meaning to Glenn’s empty life. Now, fiercely protective of Jamey, Glenn sees Tommy as a deadbeat who will never amount to anything. But Glenn is also facing his own personal reckoning. A lifelong gay man, he has unexpectedly fallen for a woman. But Glenn has bigger fish to fry when Tommy’s bad choices impact Glenn’s orderly existence and threaten to destroy the life he has built.

When ailing New Orleans mafia boss Carlo Bianchi comes looking for Tommy with a bloody vendetta, chaos mounts, and Tommy and Glenn are forced to depend on each other to protect Jamey from an unsettling future. With a lifetime of disappointments behind him, can Tommy save his son from his own father’s legacy of a broken childhood?