Writing from his room on Vancouver's east side, the man — who'd prefer it if we simply called him Smith — recounts a year in the California desert a year in an Oz-like America where truth may or may not hand out in communities gated against the outside world, in fast food joints, and in the company of a cast of characters as cracked as the sun-baked sands surrounding them.Convinced that lies might make his dreams come true, the man called Smith concocts a life, a love worth living or dying for and a longing for reality amid the madness surrounding him. With much grand humour, and after a series of twists and turns Smith heads on home, having learned at last that man's saddest, shortest, surest road to disaster is to fool himself.

Barry Kennedy grew up in Winnipeg before moving with his family to BC where he graduated from Royal Roads Military College to become a fighter pilot as part of Canada's contribution to NORAD. After succumbing to an irresistible literary fever, he began a new career as a writer, actor and standup comic. The author of three previous novels--Through the Deadfall, The Hindmost, and Rock Varnish--he currently resides in Toronto.

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