Some right-wing malcontents get in over their heads with an ocean-based secessionist movement in this debut comic novel.

North Carolina mechanic and Civil War reenactor Gage Randolph, recently unemployed, has just been paid to dig up Stonewall Jackson’s arm for a wealthy collector. Gage has the arm beside him in his Ford Bronco when he’s involved in a three-car accident. One of the other vehicles contains progressive TV host Monica Bell, who—right at the moment of impact—is conducting a call-in debate on right-winger Bill Spark’s internet radio show. The third car is piloted by Jacob Kelley, the so-called Unacrapper, on the run from the law after unsuccessfully attempting to blow up the IRS using a bomb made from his own feces (an act inspired by the same show that Monica has called in to). The two male drivers panic and kidnap the unconscious Monica, bringing her to Gage’s friend’s recently shuttered breast-themed wing restaurant. Now wanted for a whole slew of crimes, Gage and his assorted anti-government friends hatch a scheme to gain citizenship on FreedomLand, the mobile oil rig of anti-tax billionaire Zacharias Townsend. But Gage will soon learn that the conspiracy-fueled anarchic utopianism of people like Spark and Townsend may not be the best lodestar for a simple man like himself. Christopher Jackson’s prose blends madcap humor and Southern wit: “Honey, Gage dug up Stonewall Jackson’s arm and then kidnapped Monica Bell and the Unacrapper,” one of Gage’s friends tells his fiancee. “At several points during his evening, he could have opted not to commit a felony, and he blew past all of ’em.” The book skewers many recognizable figures and talking points on the American right, but the author’s characters are specific and original enough for readers to accept them as their own personalities. What’s more, he treats them and their views empathetically, exploring the motivations and emotions behind them. The author doesn’t have many answers to America’s problem of bitter partisanship, but he has provided a funny and fast-paced sendup of it for readers’ enjoyment. As things spin further and further out of control, they somehow become more cathartic.

A broad, well-crafted satire of political radicalization.