Debut novel forthcoming from Simon & Schuster, July 2025
A CrimeReads Most Anticipated Book of 2025 selection
A Publishers Weekly Spring 2025 Preview selection
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“Thrilling, suspenseful, and intricately plotted, FLORIDA PALMS shines an unsparing light on the tenuous, violent lives of young men trying to survive in a world that does not want—or see—them. Joe Pan, writing with urgency, vision, and uncommon empathy, does not turn away from these fractured and fragile lives, and neither should we.”
–Elizabeth Wetmore, New York Times bestselling author of Valentine
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480 Pages, ISBN: 9781668052181 (Literature, Thriller, Crime, Grit Lit)
Pre-Order: (Bookshop) (Apple Books) (Barnes & Noble) (Amazon)
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The Outsiders meets Sons of Anarchy in this gripping debut about a group of young men dragged into a drug-running operation.
It’s 2009, the height of the Great Recession. Best friends Eddy, Cueball, and Jesse are fresh out of high school and wild at heart, but the economy is in the dumps. With jobs scarce along Florida’s Space Coast, they join a furniture moving company run by Cueball’s father, a gruff ex-con biker who’s supposedly retired from the fast life. But when a mysterious old boss arrives in town, the payload is switched out, and the young men are coerced into shipping a new designer drug up the East Coast.
What is advertised as a bastion of brotherhood and respect quickly spirals into back alley deals, bloodshed, and an all-out turf war that will test the bounds of love and friendship. Enticed by larger paychecks, and fueled by burgeoning drug habits, the young friends find themselves trapped between rank opportunists, warring gangsters, meth zombies, crazed bikers, and a blowgun-wielding hitman, all vying for a shot of the Big Time.
Soaring, ambitious, and deeply humane, Florida Palms is a gritty coming-of-age story with enormous heart and an unflinching vision of the violence and inequities facing forgotten communities. In a relentless race against desperate circumstances, the young friends must fully embrace the crime life or abandon their loyalties and risk ending up face down in the muck of the unforgiving swamps.
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More Praise for Florida Palms
“If Florida is purgatory with a sun, Florida Palms exposes what happens to the young men who grow up in the shadows—a tightly plotted page-turner filled with gangsters, brotherhood, and betrayal. Joe Pan is an extraordinarily skilled writer, but his genius is his empathy, understanding that good people sometimes do bad things. What if you turned eighteen in the wrong neighborhood and found yourself surrounded by drug dealers, bikers, and eccentric hitmen? These are characters no reader will forget.”
–Alexander Boldizar, author of The Man Who Saw Seconds
“Florida Palms offers up a crew of freewheeling philosophers on bikes, whose cynicism and violence—and the bizarre, hilarious screeds by which they justify themselves—are counterbalanced by the naive, heartbreaking humanity of the young men swept along in their wake. Pan’s love for Florida and its rougher, neglected corners is evident and intoxicating.”
–Stephanie Soileau, author of Last One Out Shut Off the Lights
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