ESCONDIDO
Levi Simon has spent most of his life watching. He watches from center stage, fingers on the frets, reading the room the way a good musician reads a song — for what's underneath, for what's about to break. He watches his brother Jesse, the bassist, the true believer, turn a Friday-night gig into something larger. He watches his other brother Caleb, a Marine veteran turned Border Patrol agent, drift further from the family that raised him in the avocado groves above San Pasqual Valley. Then the benefit concert ends in violence, and watching is no longer enough. Set against the heat and friction of Escondido, California — a city that contains multitudes and contradictions in equal measure — Escondido is a novel about three brothers and the moment that breaks them open. When Caleb brings his baton down on Jesse in the chaos at Kit Carson Park, and their drummer Carlos is swept into detention despite his legal status, Levi is forced to reckon with the cost of standing on the outside of his own life. What does it mean to bear witness? What does a man owe the people he loves? And is there such a thing as a music that holds, when the bottom drops out?
D.J. Brooks's ESCONDIDO is a fiercely observed, deeply American novel about family, immigration, and the difference between watching something and being part of it. — Available Summer 2026