The Freedom of Obscurity

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Cover images of Darick Allan's books, showcasing engaging designs.

Books

Explore Darick Allan’s captivating books. Immerse yourself in narratives that celebrate the freedom of obscurity and ignite your passion for reading!

on Substack
Illustration of a man posing in front of a truck, showcasing a casual stance

The Future Geniuses of America

Art Trucking in the 80’s

My appointment was with Bob Lennon, the owner of Artransport. He was from Mississippi and had been in the oil business.  His desk was behind some red curtains at the end of the office, and D.E., the manager who led me there, wore an extreme frown. He lingered on the other side of the curtain. [read]

Map of Zone 22 Illustration by Emily Tellez O

The Prisoner of Zone 22

The prisoners in the Zone 22 police station were short timers, which is to say that the worst offenders were soon transferred to a more miserable existence downtown. The rest were merely questionable characters who got into brawls or petty theft and were doing a little time off the street. Captain Javier Ixtlan knew most of them well. He pretended to look down on his charges and intimidated them easily because he was a big man; but the truth was that he only loathed himself. He was a naturally warmhearted person and sympathized with most people, traits he considered a terrible weakness in his line of work.

  1. An unexpected visitor
  2. The reporter in the Red Rooster
  3. The List
  4. The handbag
  5. Gabriela’s disturbed passion
  6. A flying dream
  7. The imps of circumstance
  8. The bullet near the fault line
  9. It is dangerous to recognize some things
  10. Quetzaltenango 1981
  11. The Police Chief of Guatemala City
  12. A straightforward murder
  13. Every gun has a signature
  14. Phantoms
  15. La Esmerelda—1975
  16. The lies he has to tell
  17. The ravine
  18. A private party
  19. “You may be of use”
  20. Yarhi’s file
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Books to be published

Anne Truitt in her studio. Phto by Darick Allan

Anne Truitt in Her Studio

What are these beautiful, mysterious, objects? Regardless of how they are classified in art history—and they will be classified and re-classified, I’m sure—I think one has to start with the fact that the artist who made them was a spiritual being. Not just a person interested in ideas about religion, art, and politics—what are often called “influences” —but a spirit dealing with a body, in the world, in time. The wellspring of her work is elemental and pure. To Anne light, color and gravity were alive.

[to be published]
Shepherd COVER banner

The Shepherd Boy

He did not understand why any of it had happened, and it left a variable impression on him. The memory of the gods approaching from the edge of the plateau mingled with the loneliness that followed his humiliation, and then the welcome given to him by his family and neighbors. The kindness of the doctor’s wife and the extraordinary gift of the lollipops even mitigated the awful experience of being sewn up. It was the last time in his childhood he was to ride on his father’s shoulders, and that privilege was one of the extraordinary things that made him look back on that day with a tingling mixture of injury and pride.

[to be published]
Frontispiece for The Belly Button of the World

The Belly Button of the World

It had taken an hour to travel from Panajachel into the dusk: light glowed behind the three volcanoes along the south bay.  As the ferry bounced on the whitecaps whipped up by the Xocomil, he thought about his future. He had been sent to find the American who had disappeared two weeks before in all that beauty: if he himself vanished, another person would follow him, or maybe not.

[to be published]
WhatsApp Image 2026 04 06 at 15.19.53

La Reforma

He thought: Who is this girl? Is it possible she likes me? 

Sonia seemed to live in the sadness and the beauty of the song, and the room got smaller.  Maybe it was because they were experiencing something together for the first time. But the intimacy didn’t die with the song. The moment held; she said: “Listen to the next one—oh, my God, it has sounds I’ve never heard before!” She leaned back on the bed to take it in and stretched.

“When I wake up early in the morning…”

Somewhere just outside the door Jaime heard shuffling again. He heard guitar licks in the song sliding backwards like thoughts on the edge of consciousness. Like the spy hovering at the edge of the room.

[to be published]
  1. The Future Geniuses of America
  2. The Prisoner of Zone 22
  3. Anne Truitt in Her Studio
  4. The Shepherd Boy
  5. The Belly Button of the World
  6. La Reforma
Darick Allan's avatar
Darick Allan

I owe my life to a horse. After her favorite stallion in the Royal Danish Stables was bought by a breeding farm in Kentucky, my mother asked for a job there and crossed the Atlantic. She met my father, a diplomat, at a party in Cincinnati. Their marriage broke up in Brazil just as I was born. My father was having an affair. I was her fourth child. As a single mother, she still made our lives magical. But when she died young, we learned quickly that life is brutal. Magic and horror are the stuff of fairy tales. But they come from everyday moments: coincidences, charm, sudden malevolence. I’ve lived a privileged life. Not one of money—quite the opposite—but rich in experience. When I was five years old, I met John Glenn in Liberia during a world tour after his one orbit around the Earth. I shook his hand. At ten the American ambassador was machine-gunned to death two blocks away from me in Guatemala City. So in a way I had already touched the apogee of human experience and its ultimate decline. You don’t live apart from your dreams. Because of John Glenn’s orbit I aspired to be an astronaut. But the assassination of Gordon Mein, its repercussions and the way it echoed in my memory, put me on another path. Why was he killed, and why did I happen to be close-by? I wondered what it all meant: how these random events fit together. These are the kinds of questions that made me want to be a novelist. It is a great advantage in life to know what you want. But don’t get me wrong: I have handled my career as a writer very poorly, from the perspective of having a career at all. It has been a hidden vocation. I made a living doing other things. I wrote about film for a local paper and some magazines in the 80’s, worked as a security guard, then as an art handler driving trucks. That side-step led to a web of artists, collectors, politicians, and businessmen. Many of the colleagues and clients I encountered over the decades were geniuses. So I stumbled, in the role of a servant, into a kind of elevated world. That has been my life. In the meantime I wrote my books. Each has a different story, texture, and place: but hopefully they embody the wonder and terror we all encounter after being born.