cover image Fogtown

Fogtown

Peter Plate. Seven Stories Press, $13 (160pp) ISBN 978-1-58322-639-1

A former squatter turned novelist takes a close look at San Francisco's seamy side as its maladjusted denizens careen against each other over the course of a single strange and magical day. When an armored Brink's truck is wrecked in front of the squalid Allen Hotel, an old woman finds herself an unexpected (and illegal) millionaire. Instructed by God to dole out the cash as proof of divine love, she meets up with drug dealers, losers, stoners and miscreants, all wheeling and dealing in a neighborhood where redemption doesn't come easy. Peter Plate (Police and Thieves; Angels of Catastrophe) paints another poetically gritty Bay City tale in Fogtown.