• Fiction / Literary

An American Master returns: The author of The Things They Carried delivers his first new novel in two decades, a brilliant and rollicking odyssey, in which a bank robbery by a disgraced journalist sparks a cross-country chase through a nation corroded by delusion.

At 11:34 a.m. one Saturday in August 2019, Boyd Halverson strode from his battered Buick LeSabre and entered Community National Bank in northern California.

“How much is on hand, would you say?” he asked the teller. “I’ll want it all.”

“You’re robbing me?”

He revealed a Temptation .38 Special.

Angie Bing collected $81,000.

Boyd stuffed the cash into a paper grocery bag. 

“I’m sorry about this,” he said, “but I’ll have to ask you to take a ride with me. …”