Lester Gordon is an odd man, just like everybody else. He’s on the lower end of the spectrum, just like so many others. He falls in love and marries his next-door neighbor. They create a family with three children. All seemed right with the world for this peculiar man, then cancer takes his wife. Suddenly he finds himself adrift, wondering if he’ll ever regain his purpose in life without his wife and the mother of his children. He decides to sell his family’s car wash business and become a hospice nurse, finding a new life in comforting the dying. While training to become a hospice nurse he feels invigorated, energy now coursing through his veins. Yet, on his first solo day of attending patients, he feels he’s made a terrible mistake in following his dream of helping the dying. The emotional tsunami of daily confronting mortality finds Lester questioning his confidence, his abilities. Lester knows he’s providing the comfort, knowledge, and support his patients and their families need to navigate the dangerous waters of approaching death; but was he little more than a foolish idealist who wagered his family’s financial security? This anxiety is compounded by learning one of his young sons is writing an erotic graphic novel and dipping his toes into becoming the neighborhood bookie. And out of nowhere an old friend shows up, the hellion Ardor, with a plea to hide out with Lester’s family to escape a couple of goons who are after her and the money she stole from an Oregon marijuana farm. Foolishly, Lester agrees. And strange white catatonic dogs keep showing up in Lester’s orbit, each time giving Lester a death stare. Lester is an odd one who is full of anxiety and fear, troubled, and making stuff up as he goes. Just like everybody else.
“This Lester can lie down wherever he wants to, as far as I'm concerned. And James Ladd Thomas is a hell of a novelist.” ----- Tom Franklin, author of Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter: A Novel
“Lester Lies Down reminds me of why I started reading books in the first place—to be enchanted, to be carried away from my world and dropped into a world more vivid and incandescent. James Ladd Thomas casts his considerable spell with exquisite sentences, unerring and evocative details, and with unforgettable characters, like Lester Gordon, widow, autistic father of three, and hospice nurse who is most alive while caring for the dying. I started reading the book slowly hoping the story wouldn’t end and I wouldn’t have to say goodbye to Lester and Ardor and Ced and Melvin. Yes, fate may slap us down, but friends and family will us up. Did I mention the bad guys and the enigmatic pack of white dogs that just might haunt your dreams?” ---- John Dufresne, author of I Don’t Like Where This Is Going
"Deftly written, audacious and probing, Lester Lies Down is a memorable piece of work, and James Ladd Thomas writes some of the quirkiest dialogue I've come across in a long time. I'm glad his book found its way to me. I'll be watching for his next one." ----- Steve Yarbrough, author of Stay Gone Days
“When an old girlfriend shows up with stolen money and two goons on her tail, widower Lester Gordon is wrestling with the tricky transition from car wash owner to hospice worker. Lester is already dealing with death and dying all around him and with his three children who are experimenting with junior high porn and bookmaking. Oh, and he’s on the spectrum. By turns hilarious and heartbreaking, and with an eccentric cast of secondary characters, Lester Lies Down catches the joys and pains of Southern life in bright colors.” ----- John Calvin Hughes, author of The Lost Gospel of Darnell Rabren.
“Funny, heartbreaking and, at times, thrilling, James Ladd Thomas’s Lester Lies Down is a more than worthy successor to his earlier and equally unique novel, Ardor. Peopled with vividly realized, all-too-human characters, starting with the titular Lester Gordon, a mildly autistic hospice caregiver, you’ll often feel as if you’re eavesdropping on the most intimate conversations, many occurring on that indefinable border between Life and Death. Lester Lies Down is a remarkably insightful achievement that deserves to be read, discussed, and savored. I thank both Thomas and Lester for introducing me to a world I would never have experienced otherwise. For this I remain sincerely grateful.” ---- Michael Libling, author of Hollywood North: A Novel in Six Reels and The Serial Killer’s Son Takes a Wife
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