Cult of the Junkyard Cowboys

ISBN-13: 9781478214823 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 256 str.

Michael Alan Brich

Opis

Alex Bender, part-time journalist, reluctantly agrees to write a story about the Samsara Cult. Alex has a crush on his editor and the anniversary of the group's hijacking and shooting at the television station is approaching. Sometimes referred to as the Cult of the Junkyard Cowboys, the group was led by Daniel Spencer known as the General and consisted of wayward artists, a dishwashing poet, a stripper named Cricket, and a gifted mechanic called the Oracle of Gears. Alex discovers the cult was originally formed in the backwoods of Indiana and migrated to the hills outside of Bisbee, Arizona. They set up their ranch, changed their identities and sought refuge from their enemies which included salad forks, consumer culture and things with right angles. Rumors about the hippie cult were prevalent and some said that they lured members into their circle with drugs and sex, conducted strange rituals in a barn, destroyed manicured shrubbery and attempted to unleash a language virus at the television station. Through a documentary style narrative, the reader follows Alex's process as he attempts to understand the motivations of the group via correspondence with ex-members, trial transcripts and interviews. Alex learns that the cult's unraveling was intricately connected to the abduction of a seventeen-year old girl named Prudence and the General's affections towards her. As the journalist recreates the timeline of the group's demise, he begins to fall prey to their infectious ideas and the seductive prose of a dishwasher named Tumbleweed. Cult of the Junkyard Cowboys would appeal to readers of contemporary literary fiction, counter-culture memoirs and psychological dramas and might just claim a convert or two along the way.