PRAISE FOR EXILED
“When Glen Tubiscky appeared in the doorway, he was bigger than Marko thought he would be. Of course, everyone said that about professional athletes up close. But were all snarling linebacker gods so winsome? Marko was not a sports man, but even he felt humbled by Glen’s presence though not by the timeless flop of blonde hair or the hulking shoulders or expensive suit. It was Glen’s face; an Apollo-like set of features that suggested when he hit someone on the field, or say, your wife or mother—laid her out on the pavement with the force of three Super Bowl titles, a hall of fame induction, and the nickname “The Tub,”—it didn’t hurt. But it had to hurt, and if Marko was being honest, he wanted his wife, Pia, to hurt. Because The Tub in the doorway was proof that indeed, just yesterday,”
EXILED, page 24“Pia—C-suite executive of the greater Western Branch of Merrill Lynch, mother of two, occasional PTA combatant, disillusioned yuppie despite being fabulously wealthy by 1998 standards—had walked through their house, stuffed their youngest son’s airsoft gun into one of her oversized purses, and inexplicably attempted an armed robbery of the Contempo Casuals off El Camino. Of course, someone one had to stop her. Stop the woman running across the parking lot of the strip mall! Enter The Tub, retired from football but exiting the adjacent wine bistro with a purchasing order neatly rolled into his massive hands. How easy it must have been for the old instincts and decades of training to take over, and level Pia on the pavement as if she were a pee-wee running back who’d taken the gap.”
EXILED, page 45“As if it weren’t enough, in the sun-drenched landscape of rural Baja with her blistering skin and disintegrating thesis and evasive graduate advisor, Callie was only finding dead clams. They came up whole or split at their base, lips parted, revealing softly luminescent, greying flesh. In the mornings, barefoot and armed to dig, she found them splayed, something delicate and irretrievable in their unhinged joints, their meat picked over by the kingfishers and gulls.”
EXILED, page 63