Jupiter and Gilgamesh; A Novel of Sumeria and Texas

Winner of an IPPY Award - Bronze

 BEST REGIONAL E-BOOK – WEST OF THE MISSISSIPPI

Jupiter is crazy, and not only because he lives on top of a grain elevator.

As a sixty-year-old ad exec, he knows people are his living, but he can’t bear being with more than two human beings at a time. Unfortunately, his one psychic need is for a family, but it’s a little late to start one. 

Additional complications trip him up – the Village is about to evict him, and he’s dating a twenty-five year old woman that’s stomping roughshod over him. He’s haunted by a child he accidentally killed years ago and his best friend is Gilgamesh, a dead Sumerian king who gives bad advice.

The reader will treasure the funny, tragic ride through Jupiter’s life, even if Jupiter doesn’t.

A novel that spans 4700 years is a novel with ambition and, shall we say, hubris. Yet Scott Archer Jones pulls off this narrative miracle with grace, wit, and bravado. No one writes this good the first time out, do they? Jupiter and Gilgamesh is more than a promising debut by a hugely talented writer; it is a compelling novel of the first order. Matt Devon’s hermetic life goes public and all hell breaks loose. How does a man live an authentic life anymore? You’ll find out on this exhilarating ride through Uruk and West Texas. Do yourself a favor, buy this book, get in on the secret before everyone else knows what you soon will: here is the future of contemporary fiction.

“Scott Jones has the imagination and chutzpah of a gifted circus promoter, and a great way with words. He is a born writer, full of humor and thrilling complexity, much compassion, and a great sense of crazy, tragedy, and everything in between.  He can juggle plots like a gifted magician and keep you enthralled start to finish. Jupiter and Gilgamesh is funny, sad, original — I give it a hearty two thumbs up.”

John Nichols: Author of  Milagro Beanfield Wars

Scott Archer Jones’s JUPITER AND GILGAMESH cleverly interfaces ancient myth with a story as contemporary as today’s headlines about abandoned children, the tug-of-war of litigation, and the crossed wires of life and lust. The result is an evocative, entertaining, and challenging read.

Wally Lamb: Author of  We Are Water