The Arrest

Jonathan Lethem

"Before the Arrest, Sandy Duplessis had a reasonably good life as a screenwriter in L.A. An old college friend and writing partner, the charismatic and malicious Peter Todbaum, had become one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. That didn't hurt. Now, post-Arrest, nothing is what it was. Sandy, who calls himself Journeyman, has landed in rural Maine. There he assists the butcher and delivers the food grown by his sister, Maddy, at her organic farm. But then Todbaum shows up in an extraordinary vehicle: a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor. Todbaum has spent the Arrest smashing his way across a fragmented and phantasmagorical United States, trailing enmities all the way. Plopping back into the siblings' life with his usual odious panache, his motives are entirely unclear."--Publisher. Post-Arrest America: cars, guns, computers, airplanes, and so much more have stopped working. In Maine former screenwriter Sandy Duplessis, who calls himself Journeyman, assists the butcher and delivers the food grown by his sister, Maddy, at her organic farm. Charismatic and malicious, Peter Todbaum had been one of the most powerful men in Hollywood. When Todbaum shows up in Maine in a retrofitted tunnel-digger powered by a nuclear reactor after smashing his way across a fragmented United States, his motives are entirely unclear. -- adapted from jacket