Former academic now veteran Deputy Sheriff Blevins Bombardi tries to solve a freakish murder of a cryptozoologist seeking the elusive Skunk Ape in a national forest in north central Florida. He is distracted, though, by struggles with his inner demons: heavy drinking, depression, suicidal thoughts, and torment from the recent murder of his wife for which he was responsible. Also, his daughter ran away two years before when her mother was killed and may have joined up with a vagabond cult that moves with the seasons around the country and is now camping nearby in Florida, and he has spent countless hours traveling from state to state trying to find her.
In the meantime a category five hurricane rushes toward Florida in the unlikely month of February, the bears and monkeys (an odd piece of Florida history) in the national forest are mysteriously slaughtered by arrows, and politicians and evangelists join forces in a push to privatize all public lands.
When a bizarre and perhaps severely mentally disturbed ex-con shows up insisting that Bombardi help him locate a former lover (who may be imaginary), the Deputy Sheriff may have to step far outside the law to restore any order to his off-balance world.
All My Sins Remembered joins Ron Cooper's previous novels as part mystery, part philosophical inquiry, and part tragi-comedy. Winner of a Florida Book Award.
Praise for ALL MY SINS REMEMBERED:
"Please meet Major Blevins Bombardi, a deputy in the middle-of-nowhere central Florida, a man unknowingly haunted by the first line of Camus's The Myth of Sisyphus. He's part Spencer from Robert B. Parker's detective novels, and part TV's House. All My Sins Remembered is a fast-paced whodunit—or whodunabunchofthings—with a cast of secondary characters worthy of any swamp-dweller chronicle." —George Singleton, author of Between Wrecks and The Half-Mammals of Dixie
"Ron Cooper was born and raised on the edge of the swamp, and that curious upbringing shows through in just the right places. A mystery and love story to boot, All My Sins Remembered is a red-hot ball of iron marvel." —William P. Baldwin, author of Charles Town and The Hard to Catch Mercy
"Cooper combines philosophical reflection with a rural setting, working-class characters, an engaging storyline, and vernacular to create a rare, pleasurable experience for the reader...a lesson in what a good novel of ideas can and should achieve aesthetically." —American Book Review
"Ron Cooper has his own unique voice, and what a marvelous, darkly comic voice it is. He is an immensely talented writer." —Ron Rash, author of The Risen and Serena
"Cooper is a superb writer, and a daring one too." —Steve Yarbrough, author of The Unmade World and The Realm of Last Chances
"A prose style that snaps like garters." —Fred Chappell, author of I am One of You Forever and Look Back All the Green Valley
