MooMoo's Lottery

About the Book

“TAKE ONE BLACKBALLED AIRLINE PILOT, add eight terminally ill folks from The Garden of Eden Rest Home in Las Vegas, an outlaw from the 19th century, organize a lottery that draws for the chance to kill felons, then turn the whole scheme loose on the dregs of society, and...stand by. Time-travel, a nostalgic love song, sweet vengeance, murder and romance combine with the West’s most notorious gunman, Brigham Young´s personal assassin Porter Rockwell, in MOOMOO’S LOTTERY, a tale motivated by the excesses of criminality this planet is cursed with. It may even inspire you to start your own lottery. Why not? But if you can’t find time to initiate your own justice-bent game of chance, read MOOMOO’S LOTTERY and vicariously follow the trail of Porter Rockwell and LaRue Covington as they do it for you. Theirs may well be angel’s work below, and the pathway of the future. Porter Rockwell has been swept from the skies, from his airliner’s cockpit, by the greedy CEO of Pacific Overseas Airlines who failed to heed his senior airline pilot’s warning that the aircraft Rockwell was flying, an A-28-Z Phoenix jumbo-jet, had cracks in its main spar and should not be flown. Instead of grounding the airplane as Rockwell insisted, the CEO fired him and continued to keep it in service, with the result that 17 months after the pilot’s warning ALPHA-28-ZULU Broke up in flight over Papua New Guinea and rained it’s hot metal and burning flesh on the jungle canopy below. Rockwell, 36 and divorced against his will, is a typical pilot, a hotdog, a badass who really can fly anything with wings. Six feet-two inches and 180 pounds, sandy haired and blue-eyed, he is totally aristocentric about his flying abilities and his profession. In his view nothing can compare to the realm of flight, and as an aviator he can be snobbish about that where non-pilots are concerned. Yet once he gets to know you he is the kid next door, the All-American football player, the boy scout who helps elderly ladies across the street. Once you have won him over and learned to walk around his pilot’s ego he is your friend for life. He is also a romantic. Divorce shocked him. When his wife ran off with her lawyer he was aghast; he thought he had been a good husband, and now wonders if he will ever again have a woman in his life. He needs one, he longs for one, and not just a one-night stand; he wants a forever girl. He wants a wife, and describes her: “But late at night, when I’m weary of licking my wounds, I long for a woman to love, to hold, to caress and serve. I long for a classy young woman of the 1940s, soft, caring, and true, feminine but strong of character, her own woman yet mine. Is she an impossible dream? I need a companion to work for, to report to at day’s end, and to listen to in the glow of a fireplace. I need to touch champagne glasses with her, to kiss her while dancing, to hold her closely and love her. I need the charm of a girl in my life. Where is she? How shall I find her? She seems so far away...” Now, still blackballed from his profession, Porter Rockwell finds himself doing minimum-wage galley duty at The Garden of Eden Rest Home, the only employment he can find. But that turns out to be a blessing in disguise; there he meets LaRue Covington, AKA MooMoo, who infuses fresh energy and direction into Rockwell’s life. Incensed at the early release from prison of one Malcom Marcos, a convicted murderer-pedophile, MooMoo decides it’s time to do something the lax and profit-motivated criminal system will not; she organizes a lottery that will draw for the chance to kill felons. What, she wonders, do she and her companions have to lose? Because of their advanced ages and terminal diseases, no court or prison would want them, and since they are going to die anyway they could kill with impunity on their way out, and do society a great favor by ridding it of a few bad apples. Her aging pals at The Garden of Eden join her. Thereafter, as R

About the Author

John Luke is a native Californian who winters and writes in 29 Palms, in the Mojave Desert. He has written magazine and newspaper articles, a flight manual and two novels. MooMoo’s Lottery is the first novel of a series. A commercial pilot, John summers at his family ranch bordering on Bryce Canyon, where he flies as an air-tour pilot. An avid outdoorsman, his writing reflects a lifetime of highly varied experiences, including those gained as an observer of people. His wife Carolyn earned a degree in fine arts at University of California Santa Barbara, and is a history teacher. They have three children and eight grandchildren.