'Kings of Colorado' Author at BookPeople
Local David E. Hilton launches his debut novel on Thursday
By Kimberley Jones, 12:40PM, Wed. Jan. 12, 2011
"In the summer of 1963, when I was thirteen, I stabbed my father in the chest with a Davy Crockett Explorers pocketknife." How's that for a killer first sentence?
Chapter 3 opens with another lyric line (this one faintly recalling Saul Bellow's famous Augie March opener): "I grew up in Irish Chicago: Bridgeport, specifically." The "I" of David E. Hilton's first novel Kings of Colorado (Simon & Schuster) is Will Sheppard, a battered 13 year old who's forced to leave Chicago for a brutal Colorado reformatory school after the aforementioned stabbing incident.
Publishers Weekly calls it "a stark novel of violence and fierce friendship" and Kirkus chimes in with “a heartfelt portrait of young men in a bygone age." But don't take their word for it – you can hear Hilton, a Round Rock resident, read from the novel at his launch party tomorrow (Jan. 13), 7pm at BookPeople.
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May 30, 2025
May 30, 2025
Kings of Colorado, David E. Hilton
