Ghost Dance

It is January 2017. Donald Trump has just assumed the US presidency and become the world's most powerful man. The world is in shock - and fear, as it watches the jubilation this event causes over large parts of the United States. Two friends set out on a road trip through the American West, just subsequent to the inauguration. One is Thomas, a Scottish freelance journalist, who is looking for copy for newspaper articles. The other is Louis, an American, a recently-divorced academic who has lived in Europe for over 20 years, and, stunned by the election result, wants to "find America". The journey starts in El Paso where "no-one goes on vacation" and takes them on an Odyssey through the back country of West Texas, New Mexico, Arizona ....... They encounter the death agonies of rural and small town America in abandoned mining towns and witness agricultural decay, in an area unknown to many Americans. This is Trumpland, the boondocks fly-over states of ill educated and very angry people who are both witnessing and experiencing at first hand the Decline of the American Empire. The two friends' encounters with Trump's constituency are mitigated by meetings with the isolated and contrasting communities of ageing hippie drop outs, Native Americans, Hispanics and Mormons who also inhabit these little-known regions. Life as ever in the USA imitates art, and an unwelcome incident on the Mexican border causes the friends to change their travel plans; the road trip becomes a road flight that blows their odyssey totally off course and takes them to physical and emotional destinations unforeseen, and on a journey that will change both their lives in unexpected directions. Set in the template of the "out west" road novel, Ghost Dance is a serious work of political fiction, a state of the nation narrative which is based on the author's thorough grounding in the history, culture and social structures of the US West. The novel illustrates in chilling fashion both the anger and hate which brought Trump to power, and the frightening portents this triumph carries for America and the rest of world, through the experience of two men grappling with forces at the limits of their comprehension, and beyond the limits of their control.