Rock Varnish

Writing from his room on Vancouver's east side, the man — who'd prefer it if we simply called him Smith — recounts a year in the California desert; a year in an Oz-like America where truth may or may not hand out in communities gated against the outside world, in fast food joints, and in the company of a cast of characters as cracked as the sun-baked sands surrounding them.


Convinced that lies might make his dreams come true, the man called Smith concocts a life, a love worth living or dying for and a longing for reality amid the madness surrounding him. With much grand humour, and after a series of twists and turns Smith heads on home, having learned at last that man's saddest, shortest, surest road to disaster is to fool himself.