SOON

A NOVEL BY JAY WEST IRONS

    The nights hum with crickets and outlaw country; the air smells like diesel and Marlboros, and every pickup tailgate hides a secret.

​

    As the final summer before the turning of the decade approaches, Donna Brooks uproots her two children and flees from a beachy California. It's 1979 and she’s heading east to chase a new life—and hide a dark past. Their new world unfolds as they arrive at her estranged brother’s failing ranch on the outskirts of a small Texas town where the desert croons after midnight and the local roadhouse rules all.

    In the flicker of neon and the fallen dust of lifted trucks, Jesse Brooks and his sister Clair are drawn into a world of drugs, money, whiskey filled nights, and outlaw charm. While navigating through unspoken rules in an almost lawless landscape, Jesse is torn between his childhood sweetheart and a new love that pulls him closer to the gang’s violent core. Clair, ambitious and dark witted, falls for Tony—the charismatic playboy who tempts her brother to ride along.

    But as a rival motorcycle crew closes in, and the truth about Donna’s past threatens to break, the Brooks family finds themselves at the heart of a war they can’t outrun.

   A story of family, desire, love, and dangerous freedom, High Riders is a coming-of-age charged with neon lights and the grit of the open desert. With echoes of classic Westerns and a pulse of 1980s Americana, the novel captures a world where the old West refuses to die—it just wears a different face.

​

​******

Jay West Irons is a Canadian born and Northern California–based painter, sculptor, and writer whose work depicts the grit of the American West with the raw beauty of portraiture, figurative work, and the creation of memorable characters. Trained in classical painting and sculpture, he has recently transformed his barn into a creative studio where he blends his crafts. Jay's art carries a distinct Western identity—rooted in cowboy culture, and the love of storytelling.