Fiction

Look Out the Candyman is a gritty love story set against the raw 1970s counterculture of sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll – where ambition collides with addiction, loyalty is tested by danger and a man's desperate need to “fix” the woman he loves.

In 1974, Mark Roosevelt, is a talented musician, just out of a short Army stint having successfully avoided ‘Nam. Knowing he must soon report for National Guard duty back in Seattle, Mark reunites with Gail Loughlin in Monterey, California. A Stanford dropout and devoted daddy’s girl, Gail is from a multigenerational family of prominent attorneys. She’s been disowned by her father for rejecting the family legacy.

As their romance quickly reignites, Mark is stunned to learn she’s supporting herself by dealing marijuana. She begs Mark to apply for a transfer with the Guard, and to stay. Emboldened, he confesses his love. Gail admits he means more to her than any man ever has, but she can’t love anyone and asks him never to say those words again. Because he loves her, Mark agrees.

Gail has ambitious plans to expand the operation and pulls him in as her partner. Business booms—until robberies, threats, and rival criminals close in. But the real danger comes from within. Gail’s drinking spirals out of control, unleashing her volatile side rooted in deep trauma: the shattering disownment by her father, scars from past abuse, depression, and PTSD.

On the night of their biggest deal yet, Gail’s destructive bender nearly costs them everything. Mark faces an impossible choice: walk away from the woman he loves and the cushy life they’ve built, or become her caretaker and desperately work to find some way to stop her drinking.

With echoes of Almost Famous meets Drugstore Cowboy, Look Out the Candyman explores how love can become codependency when one partner tries to “fix” the other in the blurred lines between ambition and survival. It is the first book in a series, with music simmering in the background here and rising to the forefront in later volumes.