top of page
City of Angles

Published by Heliotrope Books

City of Angles is a darkly humorous story of hope, loss, family, and most of all, community, set in modern-day Los Angeles. In this re-imagining of the epic poem The Aeneid of Virgil, Homer V. Innes loses everything in a devastating series of calamities and winds up homeless on the streets of Los Angeles. Desperate to put his life back together and find his runaway son, Innes embarks on an epic journey across a Los Angeles that is both familiar and foreign. In the course of his misadventures, he encounters a diverse and eccentric cast of urban characters, from the homeless on Skid Row, to teenage runaways, drag queens, porn stars, and hookers, all of whom contribute to his ultimate epiphany as he seeks his place in the world.

IMG_0154.jpg

Play video

Advance praise

"City of Angles is an uplifting look at a side of Los Angeles too little seen in fiction. Like John Fante, Loving turns a compassionate and comic eye on the downtrodden and elevates them in his assured debut." 

-- Ivy Pochoda, author of These Women

​

"Like the Book of Job as envisioned by Nathaniel West, City of Angles reminds us that when we disdain the needy, we inevitably become one ourselves. A spellbinding, original work."

Chip Jacobs, author of Arroyo

​

"A big-hearted book, full of memorable characters, crackling scenes, and superbly evoked settings, its well-wrought prose sprinkled with tears and spiced with laughs. An unforgettable debut."

--Charles Harper Webb, author of Sidebend World

​

"Vivid, shimmering prose ... a novel for our time ... both impressive in its literary integrity and bold in its vision ... a work of empathy and compassion."

--MJ Moore, author of For Paris, With Love and Squalor

​

"Hope and love fill these pages, a modern epic set under the pitiless Southern California skies.”

--Don Cummings, author of Bent But Not Broken

How to order

City of Angles is available now in paper or ebook on IndieBound, BookshopAmazon and Barnes & Noble

Events

SKYLIGHT BOOKS, LOS ANGELES

October 7, 2020

A virtual reading via Crowdcast. Watch the replay:

https://www.crowdcast.io/e/skylit-loving-pochoda/1

Screen%20Shot%202020-10-05%20at%206.30_edited.jpg

PASADENA PUBLIC LIBRARY

5:00 pm PST, November 5, 2020

A virtual reading via Zoom.

Screen%20Shot%202020-10-31%20at%208.50_edited.jpg

VROMAN'S BOOKSTORE, PASADENA

6:00 pm PST, December 15, 2020

A virtual reading via Crowdcast. Watch the replay: https://www.crowdcast.io/e/x2f30h15

Screen Shot 2020-11-17 at 10.30.53 AM.pn

©2025 by William Loving

bottom of page