Florida Palms: A Novel

(Hardback)

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The Outsiders meet Sons of Anarchy in this gripping debut about a group of young men dragged into a drug-running operation.

Its 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 Floridas Space Coast, they join a furniture-moving company run by Cueballs father, a gruff ex-con biker whos 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 at 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.

Reviews

One ofCrimeReads's Most Anticipated Books of 2025

"Transfixing...A must-read. Pans intense drama has aSons of Anarchyvibe but with a greater pathos."Library Journal (starred)

"If Florida is purgatory with a sun,Florida Palmsexposes what happens to the young men who grow up in the shadowsa 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 ofThe Man Who Saw Seconds

Florida Palmsoffers up a crew of freewheeling philosophers on bikes, whose cynicism and violenceand the bizarre, hilarious screeds by which they justify themselvesare counterbalanced by the naive, heartbreaking humanity of the young men swept along in their wake.Pans love for Florida and its rougher, neglected corners is evident and intoxicating.Stephanie Soileau, author ofLast One Out Shut Off the Lights

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 wantor seethem. 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 TimesBestselling author ofValentine

Author Bio

Joe Pan is the author of five poetry books and founder of Brooklyn Arts Press, one of the smallest independent houses ever honored with a National Book Award in Poetry, and publisher of Augury Books, honored with a Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry. His writing has appeared in the Boston Review, Hyperallergic, The New York Times, and Poets & Writers, and hesbeen profiled by Publishers Weekly, TheRumpus, and The Wall Street Journal. He grew up along the Space Coast of Florida and now lives in Los Angeles. With his wife he cofounded BAH, an activist group that serves unhoused populations with sleeping bags and goods. Florida Palms is his debut novel.