Excerpt from The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Two billboards, one facing 191 South and another facing 191 North, advertised the diner to traffic. "Homemade pie . . . Cool drinks . . . Just ahead." The billboards were aged and faded. Through the years so many people had stopped to find the diner closed that one irate motorist spray-painted the northbound billboard to read: The Never-Open Desert Diner. Though this was not entirely true, it was true enough. On that rare occasion when it had not been true, the experience had turned out to be an unfortunate event for those who found the front door unlocked and Walt behind the counter. Though I didn't know for certain, I'd always suspected that infrequently Walt took down the "closed" sign and unlocked the door just to lure people in so he could run them off.

I emptied the last drops of coffee from the thermos into my ceramic mug and considered myself lucky, even though business was getting so bad I had been floating my diesel on a VISA card and trying not to wonder if I could survive another month. Still, every morning I got up feeling like I was headed home. To be sure, my luck was often hard luck, but good luck all the same, though lately I had felt more and more like a grown man still living at home with his poverty-stricken, ailing and peculiar parents—which might have actually been the case if I'd had any.

Under my skin I wasn't feeling nearly as lucky as I had in times past. Below that was a rising shiver of cold desperation. Things had to change. I wanted them to change. Like most people who said they wanted change, all I wanted was enough change to keep everything the same, only better.

The highway ahead lolled in sunlight. It was mine and it made me happy. It didn't bother me that it was mine because no one else wanted it. The brakes hissed, and I glanced over at the diner one more time before I pulled out onto 117 to begin the rest of my day

2

All the coffee caught up with me a few miles down the road from the diner. I searched for any spot large enough to allow me to safely pull over my twenty-eight-foot tractor-trailer rig. A narrow turnout appeared ahead. It was almost hidden at the bottom of a slight hill that came at the end of a long gentle curve. It wasn't a turnout at all—it was a road, though I didn't realize that until I had stopped and climbed down out of the cab. Dirt and sand have a special feel under your boots. This ground had a contoured hardness to it.

I scuffed at the sandy surface with a boot tip and stood there amazed at what I had uncovered—a slab of white concrete. I followed the concrete about fifty yards up a gentle slope. At the crest of the hill were two brick pillars connected by an iron arch. Inside the arch, in cursive metal script, were the words "Desert Home."

It seemed strange to me that I had never noticed the entrance before. I'd driven by it twice a day, five days a week, for twenty years. A car sped by on the highway below. The pillars were just high enough and far enough from the road they couldn't be easily seen, even if you were looking for them. Given the height of my cab and the level of the sloping highway, the entrance was nearly impossible to spot from 117.

For a moment I reflected on what had once been a grand entrance. It was somebody's dream gone sour and lost—probably a ranch. When I lowered my gaze a bit, the distance came into focus and I could make out a series of shallow, dry creek beds carved into the sands, all intertwined and attached.

It took a minute for the truth of the scene to register. They were not creek beds at all, but lanes and cul-de-sacs that had never made good on their promise of homes, except one, probably a model, that stuck out like a sturdy tooth on an empty gum. It was down the hill a couple blocks on my right.

A gust of wind kicked up a miniature twister of dust at my feet. My discomfort returned. Relieving yourself in a wind can be tricky business. The abiding loneliness of what lay ahead seemed to beckon and the one-story model house offered a chance to get out of the wind. I had no idea I might be hopping any sort of fence.

Excerpted from The Never-Open Desert Diner by James Anderson. Copyright © 2016 by James Anderson. Excerpted by permission of Crown. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.