I’m a pretty predictable reader. I like grit and emotion with subtle drops of comedy and I like it delivered in sparse, pulled back prose. The kind that ends a chapter or paragraph on a three-to-five word sentence that leaves you in an existential crisis for the rest of your life. It’s shocking that I only just discovered Don Carpenter — the master of this exact thing.

My wife has developed an incredible knack for finding these writers for me. She can pick them better than I can myself. After a recent trip to one of our favorite book stores — Bart’s Books in Ojai, California — she handed me Hard Rain Falling by Don Carpenter. She knew it was for me. In fact, she had already bought it. The New York Review of Books (a great place to discover new writers) had recently put it back in print and I liked the look of it instantly.

Inside I found a tragic, violent, sad and gritty tale of some juvenile delinquents running around the pool halls in Portland, Oregon. As is often the case, these juvenile delinquents find themselves in prison over and over throughout their turbulent lives. You could make the case that Hard Rain Falling is the greatest prison novel in American literature. And Don finds ways of making each hardened character you meet more endearing than the next.

Don himself is an interesting (and tragic) dude. He drifted just outside the Beat scene, lived across the Golden Gate bridge in Marin County and had a pretty good shake at writing for Hollywood before, you guessed it, he took his own life in 1995 after battling a series of debilitating illnesses. Don was never critically acclaimed during his lifetime.

“How do you wake up? It was one thing to know that you had been asleep all your life, but something else to wake up from it, to find out you were really alive and it wasn’t anybody’s fault but your own. Of course that was the problem”

— Don Carpenter, Hard Rain Falling

My discovery of Hard Rain Falling sent me down a rabbit hole of Don Carpenter for several months. If you’d like to fall down that same muddy hole, Hard Rain Falling is a great place to start. But if you enjoy reading about “the writing life” then Friday at Enrico’s is a sticky naugahyde booth of booze and drama. It’s full of Beat Generation gossip, lots of cocktail therapy and hard luck stories set in the foggy bars of SF. The Murder of the Frogs is two novellas and a short story collection of heartbreak, isolation, love, lust and manipulation. The Hollywood Trilogy contains “A Couple of Comedians,” perhaps the greatest story about working in Hollywood that exists. His funniest tale to be sure.

I can’t say it’s always been uplifting, but my journey with Don Carpenter has been as rewarding as it is tragic. He has a knack for sending you on your way with stoic grin on your face, a tear in your eye and a green bottle of beer in your hand. Which, if you know me at all, is exactly how I want to be.—Travis Ferré