February 1, 2024
Edgar Award winner Cranor offers a tense noir thriller that traces the fate and choices of an undocumented Mexican American couple and the white manager of a poultry-packing plant. Fired to make a point, Edwin Saucedo vows revenge, only to trigger a chain of unexpected events that reveal the rusted edges of the American Dream, privilege, and power. Prepub Alert.
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April 22, 2024
Edgar winner Cranor (Ozark Dogs) delivers another top-notch Southern noir, this time centered on two families who cross paths at an Arkansas chicken processing plant. Luke Jackson hopes his successful efforts to increase productivity at Demter Foods’ largest poultry facility will land him a promotion. His ambition comes at the expense of his overworked employees, who aren’t allowed overtime pay or bathroom breaks. After Gabriela Menchaca becomes so dehydrated it causes her to miscarry, her partner, Edwin Saucedo, organizes a strike and files complaints with the company against Luke. When Luke fires Edwin in retaliation, putting his and Gabriela’s already fragile finances in further jeopardy, Edwin devises a desperate plan to win his job back and pay his rent. Before long, that scheme—which targets Luke’s wife and young son—leads to devastating violence. Cranor depicts the inhumane conditions of America’s industrial food system with a vividness worthy of Upton Sinclair, and he matches the novel’s gritty realism with an anguishing and suspenseful revenge plot. Cranor continues to impress. Agent: David Hale Smith, InkWell Management.
May 1, 2024
Edgar winner Cranor (Ozark Dogs; Don't Know Tough) returns with a timely thriller that shines a light on the hidden and often-demonized underclass of immigrant meat-packing workers who keep the United States fed. Gabriela and her boyfriend Edwin have worked as undocumented laborers at Luke Jackson's chicken plant in northwest Arkansas for seven years, processing thousands of broilers a day for little pay and no bathroom breaks. While Gabby plans for a future far beyond Detmer Foods, Luke strives for a coveted promotion, and his wife Mimi tends to their infant son and her growing postpartum depression. These two couples, who might as well occupy different universes for how rarely they interact, are brought into sudden and violent conflict when Luke fires Edwin to impress his higher-ups, leading Edwin to hatch a desperate scheme that will allow him and Gabby to truly begin their lives together. Edwin's act of revenge is unforgivable, but Cranor's ability to find the humanity in all his characters will keep readers from losing sympathy, and his unshakable depiction of the brutal conditions in the chicken plant would make Upton Sinclair proud. VERDICT A third winner by a rising star of Southern noir.--Michael Pucci
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May 15, 2024
A kidnapping throws the lives of several people attached to an Arkansas chicken-rendering plant wildly out of control, even as it echoes the brutalizing rhythms of their ordinary lives. Ever since her parents brought her into the country from Mexico, Gabriela Menchaca's never had it easy. Her job as a chicken plucker at Detmer Foods is physically grueling and emotionally draining. She and her partner, Edwin Saucedo, are three months behind in their trailer-park rent. The two of them have worked so many overtime shifts that Detmer Foods now owes them $50,000 Gabby never expects to see. And her inability to take bathroom breaks at work forced her to deprive herself of the water that would have kept her pregnancy years ago from turning tragic. When Edwin arrives two minutes late for work one morning and is summarily fired by Luke Jackson, he seizes Tucker, the plant manager's 6-month-old baby, and flees, demanding a ransom of $50,000 for his return. Jackson doesn't go to the police because he's afraid to jeopardize his imminent promotion to executive officer of poultry. But he does rise far enough above his belief that "secrets were the secret to a happy marriage" to tell his wife, Mimi, that he's convinced that the man he just fired is behind the abduction and that he's taken an appropriate revenge. Although the mounting complications eventually stall, leaving all the leading characters flailing dangerously about, one dominant pattern emerges: Mimi, who's just discovered her husband's infidelity, perversely bonds with Gabby as the two women struggle to reckon with the ways they've been victimized by the men they love. The string of felonies can't compete with the chicken-plucking background for intensity and horror.
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June 1, 2024
Broiler is a layered story that connects the four main characters through broilers, or chickens specifically raised for meat production. Mimi is a well-off, stay-at-home mom to 6-month-old Tucker and wife to Luke Jackson, manager of the Detmer chicken factory in Springdale, Arkansas. Gabby and Edwin are a hardworking, undocumented couple who have worked long hours in the horrible conditions of said factory for seven years without any overtime pay. When Edwin is fired, he makes the impulsive decision to kidnap Tucker in exchange for a ransom that equates to what he and Gabby are owed. This sets off a chain of events that leaves readers in suspense as all of the characters' lives become intertwined. The women fundamentally drive this story as they refuse to stay on the sidelines. Cranor provides enough background information to understand each character's decisions as we see the pressure they are all under. Power dynamics are shifted, loyalties are questioned, bonds are broken and created, and the ultimate question is: What is justified? The ending is satisfying, if unsurprising.
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