Two best friends, a country bar, a famous burger and a bloodstained floor

Sergeant Chandler Dykes is obsessed with two misfits: Slim, a former cadet with a brutal neck scar, and his best friend, The Beast, a college basketball star with a proclivity for cooking. When Slim and The Beast take shelter from a hurricane in a country bar, they learn that Sgt. Dykes has been haunting the place, raving about opossums, bathtub whiskey, and his estranged cadet, Slim.

As the bartender swaps tales with Slim and The Beast in hopes of understanding Dykes’ obsession, the two young men are forced to confront their own troubled pasts. With dexterous prose and unflinching humor, wrapped in the rich dialect of the South, the conversations at Lockart’s traverse art, love, sex, and philosophy, warily observing the savage storm and the ghosts it seems to be dredging up. A remarkable first novel that recalls the liveliness of Wells Tower and packs the punch of Denis Johnson, Slim and The Beast lays out what’s at stake in a friendship, recalling the decisions we make on the edge of adulthood that define the person we become.

About the Author

Samuél has lived in Paris, France since 2010. His literary influences include the Coen brothers, Dave Eggers, JK Rowling, Larry David and David Foster-Wallace. His work has appeared in the The Opiate Literary Magazine, The International Forum for Logotherapy, SLAM Magazine, Paris Lit Up Magazine and Writer’s Digest. His debut novel, Slim and The Beast (Inkshares, 2015) was also the debut novel for America’s first crowdfunded publishing house. Samuél teaches anglophone literature and creative writing at the Sorbonne and is currently finishing an MFA in Creative Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts’ low-residency program.