Postmodern Blues

Book excerpt: Postmodern Blues tells the story of Jack Shock, an English professor from Virginia who we find at the novel’s opening on unofficial sabbatical, living in alcoholic oblivion in the highlands of Guatemala. Fleeing a bad marriage and doomed academic career, Shock is lured home after learning his estranged father, a retired Air Force General, is on his way out. His return to the mainland sets off a mad-cap chain of events and the unearthing of a family secret that threatens to undo him. Along the way, Shock encounters a confetti of memorable characters in academia and the late-night bars of Charlottesville who illuminate this rollicking tragicomic adventure. Honest, not cynical, Postmodern Blues is a story about perseverance in the face of mortality, and the redemptive power of love.