Five Books of Matches and a Charcoal Bridge

About the Book

"Five Books of Matches and a Charcoal Bridge" is a Rocky Mountain adventure of recklessness and pride that reveals the pitfalls of arrogance and addiction before the beautiful backdrop of snow-capped Colorado.

     Five old friends--undersold to their dreary vocations--reunite amidst the austere west to defraud unwitting communities for the sake of social revenge.  From a slipshod racing league in Purgatory to a ski pass scam in Boulder, the team embraces the clarity of their self-destructive mutiny while seeking from within each other a family that is not possible.  Their joy--and the excitement therein--comes from the ideal of that understanding.  The height of their comically spiteful accomplishments is achieved as they infiltrate a Vail resort and purloin one hundred thousand dollars in merchant funds.  The windfall of their successes--as their indiscretions escalate--predisposes their futures to dramatic ruination.

    When an epileptic seizure, a knifepoint kidnapping, and a brutal convenience store arrest dissolve their might during a conflagration of rapid-fire scenes, each character is forced to adapt to a highly personal code of conduct to survive.  The speed at which they burn and fall apart from each other marks the damage wrought by selfishness and unharnessed social contempt.  "Charcoal Bridge," above anything, is about the last notions of being "Right."

About the Author

Paul Elliott Doherty has a degree in Spanish Literature from the University of Wisconsin. He has lived in Spain and Costa Rica, but has spent most of his twenties in the coastal and mountain cities of the American West, impregnating his thoughts with a wide scope of influences.