A Gangster's Garden by Marc Cortez

 

Deep in the heart of Denver's Five Points varrio, an innocent teenage boy is killed in a gang-related shooting.
 

The intended target, gang-leader Benicio de los Santos, assembles his Latin Disciples into a Denver basement to plot their revenge. Does it matter that the hit planned for him killed an innocent boy? No. What matters is how careless his main enemy, the Sureño Daggers, have become. His cholo brethren demand the bloody removal of their enemy's chief, King Diaz, and the quick takeover of Sureño drug turf. But Santos recalls a lesson from Sun Tzu - that true generalship destroys rather than counters enemy plans - and so commands his soldados to do nothing. He'll avenge his wife and son's murder on his terms, when he decides.
 

Across town, a family struggles to come to terms with their son's murder. Businessman Miguel Rodriguez wonders what led his son down to the varrio in the first place, the very streets he'd fought so hard to overcome. He'd renamed his son precisely to distance him from their varrio past, despite the repeated protests of his wife Carmela. Wouldn't life as a white Julian Ross, mingling with Denver's elite, offer more than a brown Julio Rodriguez? They'd fought about the name change for years. And now, with Julian gone, Miguel realizes that the only way to find his lost son is to return to his childhood streets.
 

A GANGSTER'S GARDEN is a story of murder, faith and redemption, set in Denver's Five Points varrio.

ABOUT MARC CORTEZ

Marc Cortez began his storytelling career in the third grade, when he entered a school writing contest and won with his story THE ANT WHO STOLE EASTER. Since then he has become a marketing writer and frequent blogger, leveraging his writing skills into success as a business executive and entrepreneur. With A GANGSTER'S GARDEN, he has turned his lifelong passion for storytelling into a full-length novel.
 

Mr. Cortez studied creative writing at the University of California, Los Angeles, and lives in California with his wife and two children. A GANGSTER'S GARDEN is his first novel.