Age-old American resentments besiege a group of Ivy Leaguers in Leonce Gaiter's electrifying new thriller. The divisive social realities of the 1980s surface as Lennie Ashland and his two best friends take a post-grad road trip to see the country they barely understand. Their carefree world is turned upside-down at a rural, Midwest gas station where they meet a gun-toting kid and a little girl escaping domestic hell. Pent up fears, anger, and hubris violently erupt, and the group is left hopeless and hunted in the badlands of the American west. Years later, Lennie is forced to reconcile with the bloody consequences, and redemption still seems a million miles away. Gaiter's acerbic prose ricochets the reader through a chilling America at the dawn of the Reagan era, to Lennie's contemporary road trip seeking answers only time and distance can reveal.