Angels Crest

Life has been good to Ethan Denton. He lives in the small mountain town of Angels Crest and has been granted full custody of Nate, his three-year old son. But one crisp winter morning, he sets off with Nate to enjoy the beauties of the forest. While parking his truck, Ethan spots a pair of bucks and, eager to take a closer look, leaves Nate asleep in the car seat. When he returns a few minutes later, the door of the truck is open, and Nate is nowhere to be seen. Ethan and other members of the community search for the boy while a blizzard blankets the woods. ANGELS CREST is a beautifully wrought exploration of one man's act on both his life and the lives of others - including his ex-wife, ex-best friend, a lesbian couple, and an older Jewish judge experiencing problems with his own son.

Publishers Weekly

A father pays the price for a brief moment of distraction in this histrionic lost child novel set in the mountains of California. Ethan Denton finally has everything he ever wanted. He's just won full custody of his three-year-old son, Nate, and they're living together in a tiny isolated town near a stunning peak called Angels Crest. That's where the two head one chilly morning at the crack of dawn, as part of Ethan's quest to "indoctrinate his son with the divinity of the forest." But Nate falls asleep in the truck, and Ethan makes the fateful decision to leave him for a moment while he follows the trail of two handsome bucks. By the time Ethan gets back, Nate has walked away in his footie pajamas and disappeared into the forest. Before long, nearly everyone in town is engaged in Ethan's parental nightmare, including Ethan's alcoholic ex-wife, Cindy ("with her wear-and-tear body"), lesbian couple Rocksan and Jane, ex-con woodsman Glick, diner waitress Angie and tormented Jewish judge Jack Rosenthal. Writing from seven separate points of view, Schwartz (Jumping the Green) lingeringly explores the different ways parents desert their children, and the aftereffects of their abandonment. She manages to keep the plot pounding forward, but hammers home her maudlin message relentlessly. Agent, Henry Dunow. (June) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Leslie Schwartz is the author of Jumping the Green, which won the James Jones Literary Society Award for Best First Novel. Her short stories have appeared in dozens of literary journals, and her nonfiction has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Shape, Self, and other magazines and newspapers. She teaches fiction writing at UCLA Extension and poetry to at-risk high school students through PEN in the Classroom. She is also a mentor for young writers through PEN’s Emerging Voices fellowship program and writes a monthly column for the nonprofit Council of Literary Magazines and Presses based in New York City. She lives in Los Angeles.