America Fantastica

Description

America Fantastica
by Tim O’Brien

ISBN: 9780063318519
Softcover, new
Publication Date 10/01/2024

Brief Description:
“Tim O’Brien is the one American author whose works I look forward to the
most. His new novel’s ironic depiction of a post-Iraq war, mid-COVID, and
mid-Trump world is piercing and razor-sharp.” –HARUKI MURAKAMI An American
Master returns: the author of The Things They Carried delivers his first
new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a
bank robbery sparks “a satirical romp through a country plagued by deceit”
(Kirkus, starred review) One of Esquire’s 20 Best Books of the Year * Named
one of Fall 2023’s most anticipated books: New York Times, Associated
Press, Kirkus, Goodreads, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and more At 11:34 a.m.
one Saturday in August 2019, Boyd Halverson strode into Community National
Bank in Northern California. “How much is on hand, would you say?” he asked
the teller. “I’ll want it all.” “You’re robbing me?” He revealed a
Temptation .38 Special. The teller, a diminutive redhead named Angie Bing,
collected eighty-one thousand dollars. Boyd stuffed the cash into a paper
grocery bag. “I’m sorry about this,” he said, “but I’ll have to ask you to
take a ride with me.” So begins the adventure of Boyd Halverson–star
journalist turned notorious online disinformation troll turned JCPenney
manager–and his irrepressible hostage, Angie Bing. Haunted by his past and
weary of his present, Boyd has one goal before the authorities catch up
with him: settle a score with the man who destroyed his life. By Monday the
pair reach Mexico; by winter, they are in a lakefront mansion in Minnesota.
On their trail are hitmen, jealous lovers, ex-cons, an heiress, a
billionaire shipping tycoon, a three-tour veteran of Iraq, and the ghosts
of Boyd’s past. Everyone, it seems, except the police. In the tradition of
Jonathan Swift and Mark Twain, America Fantastica delivers a biting, witty,
and entertaining story about the causes and costs of outlandish fantasy,
while also marking the triumphant return of an essential voice in American
letters. And at the heart of the novel, amid a teeming cast of characters,
readers will delight in the tug-of-war between two memorable and iconic
human beings–the exuberant savior-of-souls Angie Bing and the penitent but
compulsive liar Boyd Halverson. Just as Tim O’Brien’s modern classic, The
Things They Carried, so brilliantly reflected the unromantic truth of war,
America Fantastica puts a mirror to a nation and a time that has become
dangerously unmoored from truth and greedy for delusion.