One Armed Bandit

Josh is a simple man. He goes to church, eats frozen dinners, tries to do the right thing and generally prefers that the world leave him alone.

Then his supposedly missing ex-wife, Brianna, shows up at his apartment very much alive—except for the arm she has voluntarily removed as part of a plan to collect her life insurance money.

Against his better judgment, Josh gets pulled into the scheme. His job is simple: make the arm look like it has been rotting in the wilderness for months, bury it, wait for someone to find it and collect the insurance payout. Unfortunately, making a severed limb look naturally decomposed turns out to involve an oven, Saran Wrap, Arm & Hammer and considerably more vomiting than anticipated. As the plan somehow begins to work, Josh finds himself caught between his conscience, his faith, his fear of prison and the growing realization that Brianna may actually get away with this. Faced with fifty thousand dollars and a chance to finally make a decision for himself, Josh discovers that doing the right thing is a lot easier when you get to decide what “right” means.

One Armed Bandit is a darkly comic crime story about faith, guilt, bad decisions and one mild-mannered man learning that sometimes personal growth requires leaving a few pieces of your old life behind.

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