Tattoo the Wicked Cross Grove Press, 1967. Paperback, 1968. Second Chance Press, 1981. Paperback, 1982,.Novel

"This is a remarkable first novel. Floyd Salas projects the reader into the slender body of his fifteen-year-old prize-fighter hero Aaron D'Aragon. We see through Aaron's eyes the structured underworld of a California prison farm dominated by sadistic perverts operating under the protection of the no-squeal code of their victims. Aaron D'Aragon is a spirited gamecock of an adolescent being gradually torn apart by the desires to retain the faith of his dead mother and his contempt for the hypocritical world that has destroyed both mother and faith.         Salas has gone to the heart of the dilemma that faces a human being blocked on the one hand by evil that outrages a deep sense of justice and on the other by the violence of that sense of outrage which destroys his humanity -- crucifixion upon the wicked cross, the Satanic tempter speaking with the voice of genuine righteous indignation.      Even as Aaron D'Aragon falls short of that recognition which constitutes the salvation of the tragic hero in the midst of destruction, recognition of our common human nature floods the reader with the conviction that in his very damnation, Aaron renews our faith in the human spirit."

- New American Review

"An extraordinarily evocative novel set on a California juvenile prison farm. One of the best and most important first novels published during the last ten years."

- Saturday Review of Literature

"Without peer . . . a work of genius, but because of its subject matter, a classic without a genre. Some books leave impressions; this book leaves scars."

- Andrew Vachss, Change,      Justice Department Magazine

"A classical first novel. An ugly, beautiful, nauseating, terrifying, profound, disciplined exploration of the depth of the human heart."

- New American Review

"A masterwork."

- Forgotten Pages of American Literature

"Powerful and disturbing."

- Publishers Weekly

"A natural talent of tremendous strength."

- Kirkus

"A work of art."

- Walter Van Tilburg Clark

"This is a savage novel and a work of art, a powerful, ugly, poetic, brilliant, compassionate rendering that even the squeamish should read because its important message rings loud and clear -- and unfortunately true."

- St. Louis Globe-Democrat

"This novel . . . . is a strange crucible. From its center we may pluck out a glowing ember of aspiration. If we can bear the intensity of the light, we may look into the flames and discover with what precious fuel we have fed these fires."

- Fred Cody, San Francisco Chronicle