After being acquitted of killing two previous husbands
saving herself from domestic abuse, a young woman
befriends a whiskey drunk in a Pennsylvania trailer park
whom she believes is secretly rich.

Publication Date: Jan. 5, 2021
Publisher: Elboro Press
ISBN: 978-1-7321817-5-5
Perfect Bound Paperback, 250 pages
Dimensions: 5.5” x 8.25”
Retail price: $17.95

“Smart and sweet, poetic and wild... A Smile Shy spares us none of the details of these character’s sorrows and horrors: poverty and addiction, loneliness and domestic violence. And yet every page is infused with both crackling humor and an immense tenderness.”
—Cheri Johnson, author Heists

In a broken down trailer court in rural 1990’s Pennsylvania, whiskey-soaked
Weezal Peterson works hard to forget his past—and largely succeeds.
That is until he’s targeted by Maisey, a smart and resourceful young woman
on a mission to put a lifetime of poverty and domestic abuse behind her
and find any old wealthy man who will share his fortune in exchange for
female companionship—without the sex.
Is Weezal that man?
He can’t remember.
But Maisey is sure he’s got a fortune somewhere. She’s done the research.   
What’s he trying to forget? Why’s he drinking himself into a progressively
surreal delirium in this squalid white-trash trailer park?
Of course, he can’t remember.
But there’s a disgraced billionaire and his violently psychotic henchman,
Teenage Jesus, cruising Pennsylvania in a baby blue Rolls Royce aiming
to find and kill Weezal Peterson.

Laugh-out-loud funny, sad, angry and immensely compassionate,
A Smile Shy is an uncompromising expression of life’s casual wreckage.
A wild and insightful ride from a blunt and lyrically charged
new American storyteller.

DJ Mendel is an actor, playwright, screenwriter and director born and raised in
Pennsylvania and who has worked extensively with theater-maker Richard Foreman,
filmmaker Hal Hartley, and singer Rosanne Cash. A Smile Shy is his first novel.