Good Money After Bad

Good Money After Bad follows the fluctuating fortunes of sports gambler Chance Skinner during the summer of 1995, while Chicago is experiencing its worst-ever heat wave. Chance, at 26, lives rent-free in his Gram's converted pantry overlooking Wrigley Field. He aspires to something vaguely like success, which includes respect, love, a kind of integrity and meaningful work. Gambling seems like a good shortcut to all that. When losses mount, Chance, desperate to maintain his good credit standing with bookies, submits himself as guinea pig to human medical studies. In this atmosphere of mounting danger, Chance meets his worst nightmare, the charming human parts broker Phase One Fenwick. Are the one-eyed Phase One and Chance really quite alike? Chance fears so, but hopes not. In a world in which there's a huge gap between self-image and reality, in which allies and enemies are nearly indistinguishable, where the house, as prophesized, looks unbeatable, and where even the biggest wins can be parlayed into something truly significant, Phase One offers Chance a last gasp hope for salvation--or ruin. With a cast of colorful characters that includes the City of Chicago itself, Good Money After Bad is a novel--that like its protagonist--skewers political correctness and revels in the ribald and ridiculous. Through Don Evans' deft prose and careful plotting, Chance Skinner joins a pantheon of memorable Chicago literary characters, but also transcends geography to take his place alongside the likes of Kingsley Amis' Lord Jim and Joseph Heller's Yossarian. The publication of Evans' first novel Good Money After Badpromises to be an event, and the book itself, with its subtleinterspersing of high drama and comic overtures, a distinguished addition to American letters.

Don Evans is a former sports reporter for the Chicago Sun-Times and Lombardian/Villa Park Review newspapers, where he also was an editor, photojournalist, general reporter, and humor columnist. The Illinois Press Association named Evans' "As Far As You Know" one of the best mid-sized newspaper columns in the state. Evans has also been honored for his short story writing --with a citation in Best American Short Stories' "100 Most Distinguished" and two Pushcart Prize nominations. He received fellowships to Syracuse University, where he earned an MFA under the mentorship of Tobias Wolff, and Saltonstall Foundation For The Arts. Evans has taught writing, literature and history at Syracuse University, Hamilton College (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), Friends World (London), and Westwood College (Chicago). He is a former serious gambler and part-time bookie, but gave that all up and currently is a stay- at-home dad who writes fiction in his son Dusty's sleeping hours.