The Power of the Dog (Power of the Dog, #1)

by Don Winslow

You don’t let them knock you out, you make them knock you out. You make them break their fucking hands knocking you out, you let them know that they’ve been in a fight, you give them something to remember you by every time they look in a mirror.

He’s a forty-four-year-old coke dealer with more memories than possibilities;

Children bind us to this life, don’t they?

And maybe that’s the best we can do in this world, he thinks as he gets up to resume watering the flowers—tend to the garden and maintain the hope of a God.