“Our sires’ age was worse than our grandsires’. We their sons are more worthless than they: so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt.“
– Horace
A work in progress, Snag Town is a literary novel about a once-great California farming family on the brink of extinction, struggling for a way forward in a 21st century where water is sparse and crops are controlled by latex gloved scientists and private equity funds.
For six generations, the Priddy family’s rice fields and walnut orchards have dotted the landscape surrounding the town that bears its name. Once a source of wealth and pride, the family’s land has been whittled down to 20 heavily leveraged acres—all of which are about to be placed under water restrictions.
Enter 29-year-old Gwen Priddy, the youngest, most agriculturally challenged of this deeply dysfunctional, Welsh-American clan.
Called home when her elder sister has another one of her late night vacuuming episodes, Gwen arrives in town with an overnight bag, a potted begonia and no clue how to save the farm or her family.
Waiting for Gwen are the four horseman of the Priddy family apocalypse—dementia, debt, addiction and unmet filial expectation.
Instantly trapped in the embrace of her emotional vampire relatives, Gwen worries she may fall prey to their life-sucking ways. Desperate to be back in her well-ordered 5th-story San Francisco apartment, Gwen devises an escape plan to deliver her family out of the bonds of its mostly self-inflicted ancestral damnation.
Snag Town explores the loss of family identity and the painful but positive transformation possible when its members are forced to change.