In this spare, poetic novel, a young homeless man finds solace in friendship, falls prey to the machinations of a malevolent gang of thugs, and ultimately is swallowed up by the inevitability of consequences on the dangerous and deceptively sunny streets of L.A.
Eyan, homeless and all but invisible, drifts through the sundrenched streets, parks and boardwalks of Los Angeles, sometimes avoiding, sometimes seeking the shadows. A chance encounter with his childhood friend, Marc, leads Eyan to meet ‘the professor’, an erudite and tragic figure who takes Eyan under his wing, reading to him from Milton’s Paradise Lost in the lustrated light of the city at night. But these friendships also drag Eyan into the City of Angels’ Skid Row, the largest homeless community in North America. There, the sinister Paul and his gang of black-garbed ‘eyeless boys’ have established a reign of daily terror, committing murder after murder which the police are incapable of stopping. As tensions on the streets increase, the professor continues to read from Milton’s great epic, and Eyan begins to wonder: if even the angels can find themselves at war, what hope, and what kind of home, exists for him?
Fair offers a lyrical and reflective glimpse into a vulnerable young man’s struggle to survive in an indifferent, violent world.