When science fiction novelist Kris Saknussemm (Zanesville) brings his cockeyed humor to the center of the Bible Belt, the result, Reverend America, is a picaresque tale of a prodigy albino orphan criss-crossing the country to heal a big tent of weird but heart-warming losers. Mix the best of Tim Dorsey and Hunter Thompson with Flannery O'Connor, and you'll get the picture.
Mathias "Casper" True is raised in Joplin by a two-bit con-artist couple, Poppy and Rose, who turn his gifted voice into an evangelical gold mine. "They knew a good thing when they heard it," Saknussemm writes. "He was rechristened Reverend America, a child-preaching sensation of the White Angel Fire & Faith Revival mission... an albino child in a coat of many colors [who] yells and sings like a mutant angel... so the club footed jig, the stooped straighten... and the white fire sweeps through the room setting every soul alight." In time, the greedy Poppy and Rose get out-conned by an even bolder swindler promising a lifetime stream of profits from a squirrel burger fast-food franchise.
Casper, orphaned and destitute again, bums back through the same godforsaken towns of his Reverend America heyday, picking up strangers in need: a pregnant prostitute here, an abandoned octogenarian folksinger there. Along the way he finds that, even though he could still "beat the Hell and Heavenly light out of Revelation," his compassion for the downtrodden is his ultimate gift. He's a Rinder, as Saknussemm puts it, "a piece of pork rind to repair an axle bearing or ruptured radiator. [It] wouldn't solve all your troubles, but it would get you to the next town." The best road trip is an enlightening, redemptive one--and Reverend America gives us a damn good one. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.