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Thirst

Stephen Amidon

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Daniel North, a struggling American actor living in London, has been estranged from his alcoholic father since the afternoon the elder North kissed him goodbye at the dentist's office and walked out of his life. Now, thirteen years later, Daniel receives an unexpected letter from Cal North offering reconciliation and a mysterious promise - "one very big thing to share". When the reunion doesn't go as planned, Daniel finds himself drawn into the new life his father created in Arizona after his disappearance. There he discovers the family he never knew he had - a troubled half-brother and a step-mother his own age - and more questions than answers about Cal North. As he attempts to unravel his father's secret, Daniel embarks on a quest that takes him into the harsh, sun-baked wasteland outside Phoenix and into an intrigue of greed, deception, and betrayal. Beneath the unforgiving desert sun he finds that the line between right and wrong is not always clear, and that thirst - for money, power, and retribution - can be overpowering. From a keen appreciation of the absurd and a sensitivity to the menace and surreality of the modern world, Stephen Amidon has crafted a stark, riveting tale. Thirst is gripping; a tough, observant, and compelling novel as elemental as the desert landscape in which it unfolds.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1992

About the author

Stephen Amidon

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Stephen Amidon (born 1959, in Chicago) is an American author and film critic. He grew up on the East Coast of the United States of America, including a spell in Columbia, Maryland, which served as the inspiration for his fourth novel The New City. Amidon attended Wake Forest University as a Guy T. Carswell Scholar, majoring in philosophy. He moved to London, UK, in 1987, where he was given his first job as a critic by Auberon Waugh, who invited him to review a novel for The Literary Review. Shortly after this Amidon sold his first work of fiction; the short story "Echolocation" was chosen by Ian Hamilton for inclusion in the Bloomsbury anthology Soho Square II. He was awarded an Arts Council of Great Britain bursary for the short story in 1990. In 1999 he returned to the US. His literary criticism and essays have appeared in many publications in North America and the UK and he has also worked as a film critic for the Financial Times and the Sunday Times. Amidon is the author of a collection of short stories and six novels, the most recent of which, Security, was published by FSG in 2009. His fiction has been published in fifteen countries. The novel Human Capital was chosen by Jonathan Yardley of The Washington Post as one of the five best works of fiction of 2004.[6] A film adaptation of Human Capital is currently in preproduction in Italy for director Paolo Virzi. Amidon has written two non-fiction books. The Sublime Engine with his brother Tom, a cardiologist, and Something Like the Gods which is dedicated to his son, Alexander, who plays football for Boston College.

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