Alec Clayton is an artist, writer, husband and father. He is also a refugee from chain bookstore management and “little” magazines. This book is the great circus train wreck that was America from the 1950s to the 1990s. It moves not only in time, but also in space, from the Deep South to New York City and Seattle. This landscape is populated by artists, art gallery owners, possible saints and a prostitute redeemed by the love of a good man. Now there’s a bit of gender role reversal. Characters are straight, gay and bisexual. Sex, drugs and the last taboo, creativity loom large in the tale. If this book had a soundtrack, it would be rock and roll played on a calliope.

In the 1960s, artist Lane Felts flees the South to New York City after being jilted by his lover Palmer Jackson. He falls under the spell of Scully McDonald, a failed seminarian who runs Everything for Everybody, a grassroots organization that houses the homeless and feeds the hungry. Scully launches prostitute Becca McDonald in a direction that leads to redemption. McKenzie, Becca’s daughter, becomes a successful gallery owner in Seattle. While searching for her father Scully, she represents both Palmer and Lane. More coincidences than a Dickens novel, but smoother and more believable.

The characters are complex emotionally and have depth. I enjoyed Alec Clayton’s second novel as much as the first (“Until the Dawn”) and look forward to his third. A tour de force of autobiographical fiction.

An original, rambling look at America Steve Schalchlin