The Last Dogfight

By Richard Parr

Miriam is a middle-aged unemployed school teacher tricked by two fruit tramps, a hobo and dwarf, into hopping a boxcar when her aging station wagon breaks down on a railroad overpass ten miles from her next job interview. She misses the interview when the train doesn't stop and finds herself broke and jobless in the fruit orchards along the Columbia River. In desperation she accepts Sandy and Dink's offer to work with them picking cherries. On weekends she witnesses the lucrative income the two make from cockfighting with their professionally bred and trained birds, winning the hard earned wages of the other migrant pickers. The betting stakes and risks increase dramatically when the weekend entertainment turns to dogfighting. Miriam's journey of survival with the two fruit tramps takes her from the early summer cherry harvest in the Columbia River Gorge to the fall apple picking in Washington's Okanagan Valley. Along the way they rescue Tracy, a runaway teenage hooker from a California prison farm. Miriam's life as a novice picker becomes more challenging when she befriends the younger woman and tries to protect her from the predatory males working in the orchards, including the hobo and dwarf.The Last Dogfight is the story of an educated woman trapped by economic and social forces, learning to cope in the migrant world of fruit harvesting in the Pacific Northwest. Seen from the perspective of the four Anglo pickers, it is a dark humor trip through a little explored corner of America's melting pot.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1973206544
• ISBN13: 9781973206545
• Release Date: November 2017
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 239 Pages
• Weight: 0.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.6" x 6.0"