An Intention of Flowers

Work of Art Book 1

by Ken La Salle

Many years ago, outside of a florist in Santa Ana, a love was shot down. Petals and blood, death and life littered the parking lot.

Now, the florist is gone but the parking lot remains.

Nearly two decades later, the flowers have returned.

A young man lays down on the asphalt day and night, with little more than a crude brush and crappy paint. He paints flowers on the asphalt in just a few strokes. With line after line, he brings the dead back to the world.

It’s not magic. That’s the power art holds. The young man doesn’t know it, yet; there’s no way he could. He’s not an artist. He doesn’t even have permission to paint the lot.

Into this lot steps the new art teacher at Santa Ana High School, Andy Hollis, who honestly believed that playing art teacher was the easiest way to spend his summer. What he doesn’t realize is that the life of an artist is a life of obsession, connection, and seeing a world others never imagined was there all along.

Joseph’s flowers are coming back to Santa Ana and, before they can destroy even more lives, Andy Hollis is going to learn just how far an artist will go to create his perfect work of art.

5 out of 5 fairies

This was beautiful on so many levels: the power of art and how it can move and drive us, the connection between humans, and the art that can unite people across what might otherwise be an unbridgable gap. La Salle does a great job of bringing the story to life from the beginning. You can see everything unfold before your eyes, and I loved the juxtaposition between artist and future art teacher it begins with. The different ways an adult and a teen look at the world, the beauty of the flowers being painted compared to the canvas they’re being painted on. All of it really hits hard, and the focus on the art and how it tied the past to the present made the mystery even more interesting.

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Born on an 18th century mining ship, Ken La Salle writes about whatever he damn well pleases, hoping to build more of a cult following than a readership just for a cut on the robes. From monologues to philosophies to worlds you can’t imagine, he likes to make you think in ways you may not anticipate. Looking for the mainstream but sticking to the shore, you can find out more about Ken La Salle at the imaginatively named www.kenlasalle.com