-U.S., pg. 232

U.S.! is a more than worthy successor to New-Stories-from-the-South-anthologized Backwards City #2 contributor Chris Bachelder's debut novel, the excellent and shamefully neglected Bear v. Shark. It even makes use of one of Bear v. Shark's peripheral characters, the Last Folksinger, in a way that is more than a little Vonnegutesque.

If you're a regular reader of the blog you already know the basic plot: in a world not entirely unlike ours, filled with comfortable and complacent people not particularly interested in thinking about the plight of people worse off than they are, author and activist Upton Sinclair is continuously reborn and just as continuously re-assassinated. He writes book after book, political novel after political novel, but no one ever listens; his works are ignored while his killers are national heroes.

Can you see where Bachelder is going with this?

And it's good.