America Fantastica

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

An American Master returns: The author ofThe Things They Carrieddelivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery by a disgraced journalist sparks a cross-country chase through a nation corroded by shameless delusion and deceit.

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. Ill want it all.

Youre robbing me

Not you, Boyd replied, revealing a Temptation .38 Special.

Angie Bing, the teller, scraped together $81,000.

Boyd stuffed the cash into a paper grocery bag.Im sorry about this, he said, but Ill have to ask you to take a ride with me. ...

So begins the adventure of Boyd Halversonstar journalist turned notorious online disinformation troll turned JC Penny managerand 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 Boyd and Angie 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 Boyds past. Everyone, it seems, except the police.

America Fantastica marks the triumphant return of an essential voice in American letters. Just as OBriens modern classic, The Things They Carried,so brilliantly reflected the unromantic truth of war,America Fantasticaputs a mirror to a nation and a time that has become dangerously unmoored from truth and greedy for delusion.

Reviews

"The best American writer of his generation." San Francisco Examiner "A marvel of storytelling. ... A vital, important booka book that matters not only to the reader interested in Vietnam, but to anyone interested in the craft of writing as well." New York Times on The Things They Carried "The Things They Carried is as good as any piece of literature can get." Chicago Sun-Times "This is writing so powerful that it steals your breath." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on The Things They Carried "Rendered with an evocative, quiet precision, not equaled in the imaginative literature of the American war in Vietnam." Washington Post on The Things They Carried

Author Bio

Tim OBrien was born in Minnesota and served as a foot soldier in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970, and after graduate studies at Harvard worked as a reporter for the Washington Post. When If I Die in a Combat Zone was published in 1973, it established him as one of the leading American writers of his generation, a status that was confirmed when Going After Cacciato won the National Book Award for fiction.