by Bruce Wagner
First published 2020
An orphaned billionairess moves through her gilded world while a wrongly convicted black man serves time for murder. A schizophrenic child loses himself in Wolverine comics as a cancelled television showrunner watches his career crumble. Meanwhile, a hustler spins lies about being Elon Musk's secret child, and an aging standup comedienne faces her declining relevance. Their separate trajectories pull them toward 2020, a year that will bring pandemic lockdowns and social upheaval. Some will die in the chaos. Others will find unexpected ways to thrive as the old world breaks apart. Wagner weaves their stories into a tapestry of contemporary American life, where reality becomes stranger than any superhero franchise. The novel captures how ordinary people survive extraordinary times, finding both horror and wonder in a world that exceeds any Hollywood imagination.
Genres: literary-fiction, american-fiction, contemporary, 21st-century
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: found-family, ordinary-people-in-extraordinary-times
Setting: America, Hollywood
Period: 2020, Contemporary
360 pages · Paperback · Felix Farmer Press
Content warnings: mental-illness, racism