A Caribbean woman loves a Seattle sculptor. Their romance should end with slurred daquiri kisses. But there's this little problem. Someone else wants her—the guy in the aqua Thunderbird. The color of his ride clues her who's driving. Her first lover. Someone related.

Winner, 1991 King County Arts Commission Publication Award for Fiction
 
Reviews

The Seattle Weekly, December 4, 1991, Glen Hirshberg reviewing Newt:

"Ron Dakron does wonders with sweat. In his new novel, Newt, the best moments occur when Dakron’s restlessly sensual prose zeros in on a restlessly sensual moment; a steam bath, sex, the silent moments after sex . . . No action is described with a conventional verb. No event takes place within a conventional time frame. The results are challenging, aggravating, and hypnotically resonant."

Reflex Magazine, January/February 1992, William Elston reviewing Newt:

"One is immediately caught in its linguistic web: readers are best advised to get the hang of Dakron’s predatory prose before it gets the hang of them . . . Images clash and explode like reflections in kaleidoscopic insect eyes. The story itself blooms in language that resembles those little monster pills that expand in water. In truth, language may be the real protagonist here. One is reminded of Heidigger’s statement that prose is dead poetry. Nothing dead here. Recommended reading."

Upstream Magazine, Winter 1992, Douglas Brick reviewing Newt:

"The first thing that strikes a Newt reader is the style: short clipped sentences, risqué neo-verbs, and a plethora of striking metaphors . . . If novels in general are mirrors of the world, Ron Dakron has created a sort of broken-mirror mosaic, reflecting and interposing times and places, something like a cubist, pointillist collage, beaten out to the rhythm of moody, fragmented Seattle rain . . . it manages to create a sort of exclusive, four-dimensional time warp where past, present, and future meld in a drug-fear-creativity induced dream time . . . Newt creates an exclusive universe, full of riddles . . . All in all, a fine effort, which will keep many readers firmly glued to their favorite reading chairs for the duration of their reading."

American Book Review, June-July 1993, Volume 15, Number 2, John Jacob reviewing Newt:

"Finally I gave in to [Dakron’s] style, which to me is the secret of the book. Obviously Dakron knows what he is doing. Dakron’s best scenes are his steamiest, the love-making scenes between Newt and Alysha. The reader is always close to one character or the other, and that is the achievement of a book that . . . is close to popular fiction only if one considers Kathy Acker and Cookie Mueller to be 'popular' fiction. I commend Black Heron for having the audacity to publish it."

The Stranger, October 18-24, 1994, Doug Nufer reviewing Newt:

"Ron Dakron’s sentences are lines short, rhythmic, poetic . . . Dakron’s storytelling technique gives the reader a perspective that shifts from the mundane concerns of Will she get away? and Will they marry and breed? The question is, Will Dakron’s lines dazzle to the end or burn out the patience of classification-bound readers who must have either story or poetry? Newt is daringly and relentless opposed to plain language."