Clucked
A Quirky Nautical Tale of Adventure, Misadventure, and Justice Served
by Troy Hollan
Love a good adventure story-one with sweet old dogs and flawed, yet lovable humans? Hate the idea of factory farming and animal abuse? If so, you’re gonna love Clucked! Clucked takes the reader, its bereaved Spam-loving protagonist, and one elderly rat terrier on a wild voyage from Corpus Christi Bay to the Sea Islands.
What do you do when you have nothing left to lose? You say goodbye to everything and everyone you’d ever known, pack up your worldly belongings (and an old half-blind dog), cast off your lines and set sail in your tiny sailboat to anywhere else.
Two years ago, Matt lost his wife to an asleep-at-the-wheel truck driver for the corrupt Clawson Chicken Corporation, and most of his savings to a court battle with the aforementioned fowl magnate. Trusting that the ocean will heal his battered psyche, Matt heads out from Corpus Christi Bay in a vintage sloop, trying to out sail bad memories and find a path forward.
As he winds his way east beyond the Gulf, he has adventures (and misadventures), meets a quirky cast of characters, and is dogged at every turn by reminders of the reach of the greedy chicken king, Colonel Clyde Clawson. A close encounter with a coral reef nearly wrecks his boat, a mishap that draws him away from his loosely-charted journey, up the intracoastal waterway, to Bullfrog’s Boatyard, and ultimately into the heart of Gullah Geechee country.
Here, Matt meets a beguiling linguistic anthropologist and learns the terrible truth about the Colonel, his secret lab, and his cannibalistic coterie (the Circle of Tantalus). With environmental abuse running rampant and factory farming taking on a whole new meaning, it will be up to Matt and friends, both old and new, to bring down the greedy Clawson corporation, find justice for its victims and along the way, save a musical dog, and a whole bunch of chickens.
REVIEW
5 out of 5
This book was a wonderful blend of adventure, humor, adorable animal cuddles, and heartbreak. I wasn’t sure after reading the blurb if this would fall into satire, but Hollan manages to tug on your heartstrings one moment, while making you laugh the next. At the core, this is a tale of grief, healing, and corporate greed. Matt’s loss is made even more heartbreaking by how the Clawson corporation managed to squash his first attempt at getting justice, through lawyers. The story is so well written, with such vivid descriptions, that you can practically see, feel, hear, taste, and touch what Matt does. The characters he meets in his travels that help him are wonderfully colorful and varied. This is a beautiful piece of literary fiction that will transport you to another place, and on an amazing journey, with one man and his dog.
LEARN MORE
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Hollan’s first novel CLUCKED, is an action-packed sailing adventure, with revenge, romance, some tongue-in-cheek humor and a few jabs at the state of the modern food industry.
Troy lives with his wife and two spoiled rescue dogs in Austin, Texas. A lifelong traveler and adventurer, he’s been a salvage diver in the Bahamas, joined treasure hunters looking for lost shipwrecks, ran a beach bar on an island and once biked across the Australian outback. Read more at www.Cluckedthenovel.com
A note from the author:
While Clucked is a work of fiction, some of the book is based on actual events. The rest, including Clawson’s demented pursuits, are simply a product of my own twisted imagination. I’ll leave it up to the reader to decide which is which!