Emotionally terse and sharply observed, this novel is a journey through the post-Vietnam west coast, where the travelling is still easy and being on the road is still good—but now it’s not a matter of listening to bop on the radio and smoking joyful joints à la Kerouac. It’s moving drugs by Greyhound bus across the border for the mob. It’s staving off panic attacks at the first sign of intimacy. It’s sex without emotion, hallucinatory hospitals, broken-down vets, and the murder of your own mother as a merciful release into the little of untouched nature that is left.