A young marine returns home from Iraq, blinded and scarred by a roadside bomb and harbouring a terrible secret. He saw something in Iraq that can never be erased and the knowledge of it is slowing driving him mad. Called Black Jesus by his fellow soldiers on account of his name being Lionel White and his birthday being Christmas Day, he has returned to his decaying home town to sit in the back of his mother's junkshop, drop Oxycontin and try to forget what he knows. Into his life one day rides Gloria, a young dancer with a mysterious past and shocking injuries of her own, who is fleeing darkness and violence of a different kind. Together they might just be able to make one life whole again. Set in the dying upstate New York town of Gay Paris and Venice Beach, LA, and populated by a cast of characters straight out of Bukowski or Kerouac, this is a great debut novel by a brilliant musician and songwriter with an international cult following.