We Are All Crew

Description

"This eye-popping page turner hits on all levels and will keep you up way past your bedtime...A coming of age thriller with imagination, guts, and soul." --EcoLit Books "Here we have a Huck Finn for our environmentally damaged age, lost on a river, and moving downstream with humane monsters and monstrous humans. We Are All Crew is hilarious and sad, slapstick and grotesque, fantastical, phantasmagorical, but never, ever just child's play." --Marlon James, author of A Brief History of Seven Killings "Two fourteen-year-old boys embark on a cross-country boat trip that becomes a romp through social anthropology in this hilarious, picaresque novel. But don't be fooled. Landauer's observations are as searing as they are funny, and each new twisted and isolated archipelago of a community they encounter resonates in its absurdity like a vision of the near future. We Are All Crew is a coming-of-age story for the boys, but perhaps, if we can channel Landauer's camouflaged optimism and his biting humor, for America as well." --Tim McLoughlin, author of Heart of the Old Country "The conjuration of an articulate risk taker has spun a tale and created a world infused with politics, 'correctness,' and irony that is witty and intelligent. Taking on serious subjects--environment, deforestation, global warming, and partisan hypocrisy--while addressing the various social networks, apps, video games, and rock-star super-shows, is a lot to handle. But Bill Landauer rises to the task to create a wonderful read. Just sit back and enjoy." --Rashidah Ismaili, author of Autobiography of the Lower East Side Two fourteen-year-old runaways hell-bent on reaching California end up aboard the Tamzene, a mysterious riverboat that runs on alternative fuel. Piloted by the enigmatic Dr. Seabrook, the Tamzene travels the waterways of a bizarre, fun-house image of the US. This is a satire that questions the sanity of our basic principles, as Gulliver's Travels did for eighteenth-century England.

As veteran journalist of nearly two decades, Bill Landauer has covered the upper echelons of the federal government in Washington, DC, and towns of less than 200 people. He's flown in military helicopters and rubbed elbows with murderers, lawyers, and Christian Scientists. Once, at the White House, a reporter from the Christian Science Monitor told him to get out of her chair. He's even written about cat-shaving. He lives in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. We Are All Crew is his first novel. Kaylie Jones is the award-winning author of five novels and a memoir. She teaches writing at two MFA programs and lives in New York City.