Death Sentences

Michael Zimecki Peter “Pop” Popovich is a 24-year-old unemployed glazier, anti-Semite and white supremacist who is pushed over the edge by his chaotic mother, his unresponsive lover, an uncaring stepfather and a right-wing hate machine that tells him liberals want to take away his guns and his liberty. While he waits to be executed for his crimes, “Pop” squibs sentences, whole paragraphs, a novel about life on Death Row in which he reprises the life that landed him there. Death Sentences is loosely based on an incident in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in April 2009, when a lone gunman, convinced that the government was coming to take away his guns, had a four-hour standoff with police. This explosive novel, reminiscent of the works of Ed Bunker and Charles Bukowski, is a hellish story from the American underclass, its disenfranchised characters long abandoned by government and society and prone to constant failure and excessive violence. Gripping, personal, cruel and hilarious in turn, Death Sentences gets right under your skin.