Donuts

About the Book

The way Francis tells the story, more than TV Guide, Seroquel, Mr. Jinx (his talking cat) and his SSI check, the obese, rooming-house boarder never would’ve lived to the ripe old age of 35 without donuts. Absent family, friends, love, sex, work, and sanity, donuts fills the emptiness in his stomach – and soul. Everyday, Francis rolls out of bed, buys two boxes of donuts at the Dunkin’ Donuts next door to the SRO, and shares them with other boarders including Mr. C, an alcoholic Red Sox fan, José, a junkie, O’Neil, a Jamaican Rastafarian dedicated to social justice, and Bertha, a psychotic, elderly Holocaust survivor who believes she’s Golda Meir. All is well in Francis’ imaginary world until his psychiatrist convinces him to commit to living in reality, while the landlord raises the rent exorbitantly for the purpose of gentrifying the rooming house, the Hawthorne Inn. Donuts’ pathos, filled with loneliness, humor, joy, sadness, hope, rage, compassion, and bravery, squirts out on every page like raspberry jam from a jelly-filled sugar cruller. Set in a Salem’s immigrant neighborhood (“Murph’s Turf”) in the spring of 1986, Francis’ gritty tale relates his courageous effort to confront the schizophrenic’s suicidal impulses as he searches for friendship, love, sex, and meaning in life. Thrust into a leadership position by a community-organizing group (PEST), ultimately Francis discovers his mission entails fighting for social justice and writing about the truth from his unique perspective. This rollicking literary novel, Donuts (117,000 words) is a triumph because Francis triumphs in his rocky sojourn toward sanity, meaning and dignity. Wandering through the dank SRO rooms, strolling Salem’s lonely cobblestone sidewalks, hanging out at Dunkin’ Donuts, and discovering the passion of baseball at Fenway Park, Francis embraces the real world by befriending dogs, cats, birds and the “nobodies” who survive below the yuppies’ radar screen. Donuts is a celebration of sixties music, writing, Hemingway novels, “people power”, baseball, friendship, family bonds, and survival. As Francis was fond of quoting Ernest Hemingway; “The great thing is to last, . . . “

About the Author

Over the past four decades Peter Cox mopped the floor at Dunkin' Donuts, worked in a candle factory, framed homes, back-packed through Europe, hitched-hike to the West Coast, hopped a freight train across Canada, wrote for the U-Mass Daily Collegian, served as a Peace Corps volunteer in South America, functioned as a paralegal in a refugee office on the Tex-Mex border, earned a M.A. in economics from the University of Texas, organized tenant unions in Salem, Massachusetts, and worked as an urban planner in Irvine, California. He has published several novels including Donuts, Missing Faith, On the Run with Jack Frost, and Blended Borders (Xlibris.com). Presently, he is making ends meet, persevering in the Great Recession and (trying to) keeping hope alive.