THE GHOSTS OF PINOS ALTOS
A novel

I have written my first novel, THE GHOSTS OF PINOS ALTOS, and my agent has begun submitting it to publishers.

The pitch is:

THE GHOST OF PINOS ALTOS by Dawn Wheat is a comedic novel set in 2008, during the beginning of the Great Recession, and is told from the point of view of Cyrus (Cy) Larson, an under-performing college junior terrified of his dim employment prospects in a financial crisis. Hoping to find a summer internship like his classmates, he accepts a job in New Mexico, a thousand miles from his small hometown in Illinois. The job turns out not to be what was advertised, and so even though he is without a car, he bolts, walking north along Interstate 25 until he succumbs to sleep beside the road in broad daylight. His bleakest, most vulnerable moment turns out to be his luckiest—he is spotted by Syngen Smith, an eccentric college student dressed in vintage clothing. Syngen is late for a dinner party in Santa Fe but stops anyway, then decides on the fly to take Cy along. This bit of serendipity triggers a new stage in Cy’s life, as it leads to Henry Blatt, a retired music store owner from Little Rock, who is spending the summer in Santa Fe while writing a novel. Henry hires Cy to be his personal assistant in exchange for pay, board and a letter of recommendation. Cy’s adventures eventually lead him onto the set of The Ghosts of Pinos Altos, a movie being shot in Santa Fe. The star is Kat Dixon, a famous screen veteran who, forty years prior, was engaged to Henry Blatt during a film production in Santa Fe. The past and the present converge and ultimately impact the future in ways none of these individuals could have imagined. Once again proving the accuracy of New Mexico’s nickname: The Land of Enchantment.