Joe Pan’s “Florida Palms” receives starred review from Library Journal!

27/05/2025

Joe Pan’s debut novel, Florida Palms, which publishes in July with Simon & Schuster, is already garnering rave reviews, including the following from Philip Zozzaro in the Library Journal:

“Poet and small-press publisher Pan’s (Operating Systems) transfixing first novel explores family and friendship—and how they can be undone in the pursuit of money and power. In 2009 Florida, childhood best friends Eddy and Cueball have just graduated from high school into the Great Recession, and their job prospects are dim, so they both join the moving company run by Bird, Cueball’s ex-con biker father. Bird is something like a surrogate father to aspiring tattoo artist Eddy, though Bird disdainfully treats Cueball (the heir apparent to the moving company) as nothing more than an employee. Soon, both young men are roped into Bird’s plan to turn his company into a network that will distribute a new designer drug up the East Coast. Eddy intended this to be a short-term gig with long-term profits, but he and Cueball seem to be on a downward trajectory, surrounded by warring gangsters, bikers, and hitmen and ensnared in their own spiraling drug addictions. A must-read. Pan’s intense drama has a Sons of Anarchy vibe but with a greater pathos.”