As David Hoffer, 44, rides his Harley Davidson Heritage Softail south on the Laurentian Autoroute to a memorial for a friend who has died of prostate cancer, he worries that he may soon join his pal on the other side. His back is killing him, and he's got a pain in the rear end that just won't go away. Hoffer's pain in the butt may be non-medical. To finance new equipment for his music video production company, he has sold land adjoining his studio to the Children of the Sun, but he has learned that their religious activites don't consist of nude sunbathing. His affair with Roberta, half his age, is complicated by his attachment to his previous lover. His inner child (more dopehead adolescent than squalling infant) is annoyed with him; so is his ex-wife; so is his business partner. So are some other people who don't like his style.

Set in 1994 in the Laurentians where the Solar Temple cult was planning its apocalypse, Badass on a Softail is a culture-jamming fugue on what happens when the Age of Aquarius stares into the mirror and sees the Age of Acquisition staring back.

T. F. Rigelhof is a contributing reviewer to the Books section at The Globe and Mail and was recently used as the intellectual pin-up for the new book section at the National Post.

His essay on religion in Canada at the end of the millennium, A Blue Boy in a Black Dress: A Memoir, won the QSPELL/Royal Bank of Canada Award for Non-Fiction in 1996 and was also nominated for the Governor General's Award. His critically acclaimed short stories of contemporary life in Montreal have been anthologized and adapted for television and are collected in Je t'aime, Cowboy.

His first novel, The Education of J.J. Pass, has been ranked as one of the best coming-of-age novels written by a Canadian. His satirical second novel, Badass on a Softail, was a finalist for the Mordecai Richler's Prix Parizeau II. Recently retired from teaching at Dawson College, Rigelhof now lives in Westmount, Quebec.

T.F. Rigelhof's profile page

• "The choice man for reading our society's erratic spiritual pulse."

<i>The Montreal Gazette</i>