Frank Kalinyak, disgraced ex-cop, returns to Pittsburgh, Pa., "Iron City", his hometown, from Tucson where he has been living a desperate existence since the death of his young daughter. He has been summoned home by Bobby Mack, an Assistant D.A., to find out who murdered an old high school friend. Kalinyak is swept into a whirlpool of bizarre killings, religious fanaticism, church duplicity, hustlers, cops, junkies, old friends gone bad. Amid the fractured landscape of Iron City, rusting mills, rotting industry, he struggles to find sense in his life. Ultimately he must ask: who is he and can he survive? "David Scott Milton can write like an angel... a writer hell bent on fulfilling the legacy of John Steinbeck, carrying on the tradition of James Jones and exploring his own heights." -- Alabama Journal "It was my misfortune to have missed 'The Quarterback', and thus be unaware of this fine, unflinching writer. He does not prettify, embroider, ornament of otherwise offend against the utter dignity of his hard, enduring characters; out of their meanness, and misery, he has made a story which I envy, in prose as clean and businesslike as a switchblade. Make sure everybody hears about this book; it's not about a gambler and a broad and a fighter at all-it's about the human condition, and it's beautiful." -- George V. Higgins, author of The "Friends of Eddie Coyle"
Author Biography:
David Scott Milton started as an actor in New York. He was an early member of Theater Genesis alongside Sam Shepard, Leonard Melfi, and Murray Mednick. His first plays, "The Interrogation Room" and "Halloween Mask," were produced there. Later plays, "Duet" and Bread," were done at the American Place Theatre. "Duet," starring Ben Gazzara, went on to Broadway. Milton's play "Skin" won the Neil Simon Playwriting Award. His screenplay, "Born to Win," became Ivan Passer's first American film and starred George Segal and Karen Black. He has published six novels. "Paradise Road" was cited by the Mark Twain Journal "for significant contribution to American literature." From 1977 until recently, he taught playwriting and screenwriting at USC. For thirteen years, he taught creative writing to men at the maximum security prison in Tehachapi, California. He wrote an article about the prison for the Los Angeles Times, and he created a one-man show, "Murderers Are My Life," which was nominated as best one-man show by the Valley Theater League of Los Angeles.
