the bestselling author of ARROYO
In an evocative follow-up to his Los Angeles Times bestselling Arroyo, Chip Jacobs returns with a gripping tale of brotherhood, recklessness, and footloose souls in the anything goes of late-seventies Southern California.
As their elite, all-boys prep school turns coed, transforming from suburban Lord of the Flies to gender-roiled soap-opera, two unlikely friends—Luke Burnett and Denny Drummond—alternate rescuing each other from self-destruction amid troubled home lives. Eager to maximize their era as invincible seniors at Stone Canyon Prep, they and their pals commandeer Bob’s Big Boy, explore the secret world beneath Caltech, stumble into a possibly-supernatural lab animal, and grapple with near-ODs at a playoff game. Just as our heroes manage to graduate, their bond is shattered by a wild gunshot that'll haunt them for decades.
Twenty years later, Luke is a high-powered journalist with a nosediving career, while Denny, a visionary software engineer, is socked by a terminal diagnosis. Desperate to make amends for that coyote shot, Denny guilts his estranged friend into helping him, all climaxing with a Hail Mary bid to demystify mortality, with an assist from Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, while reconnecting with what matters most.
Later Days is a powerful exploration of the ties that bind and break us. Perfect for readers drawn to rollercoaster friendships, forgiveness, and the raw beauty of life skimming its edges to Near-Death Experience. With insight into Pasadena’s buried histories and the psychological baggage of growing up in the shadows of “Great Men” fathers, Jacobs’ second novel is as emotionally resonant as it is intellectually sharp.
Chip Jacobs is an acclaimed author and prize-winning journalist, praised by Publisher Weekly as "an exceptional storyteller.". On the narrative, nonfiction side, Jacobs wrote the gallows-humor, true-crime book, "The Darkest Glare," and the biography "Strange As It Seems," an Indies Book of the Year finalist. He is also the co-author, with William J. Kelly, of two environmental social histories: the international bestselling "Smogtown" and its sequel, "The People's Republic of Chemicals." Besides them, he's contributed pieces to anthologies, among them "Los Angeles in the 1970s: Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine."
Jacobs' reporting has appeared in the L.A. Times, the L.A. Daily News, CNN, The New York Times, the Southern California News Group, L.A Weekly, and elsewhere. He has won seven Los Angeles Press Club Awards and multiple literary honors, including from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, The Green Prize for Sustainable Literature, Booklist and Foreword magazine's best books in genre, and the Shanghai Book Awards.
He is currently at work on the story of the Long Beach Freeway (710) fight, the longest, fiercest highway battle in US history, and several Hollywood projects. Jacobs, a graduate of the University of Southern California, garage-band guitarist, and Beatles fanatic, lives in the L.A. area.