Ask the Dust

<p><em>Ask the Dust</em> is a virtuoso performance by an influential master of the twentieth-century American novel. It is the story of Arturo Bandini a young writer in 1930s Los Angeles who falls hard for the elusive mocking unstable Camilla Lopez a Mexican waitress. Struggling to survive he perseveres until at last his first novel is published. But the bright light of success is extinguished when Camilla has a nervous breakdown and disappears . . . and Bandini forever rejects the writer's life he fought so hard to attain.</p>