Rain Boys

Author Daniel Church's Rain Boys, rails against ineffective government as we know it, all the while embracing a hope that mankind is basically good and can overcome its own destructive ways. Set on the shores of a small town called Rainville, in America's last great wilderness state of Alaska, Rain Boys is a book hell bent on getting the government out of our lives-along with runaway capitalism and its exploitative ways. Rain Boys is full of socialistic overtones regarding community activism, health care and the formation of a government that actually works for the people. It's about the haves and have nots. It may be idealistic with its hopes for a utopian society, but it delves on the reality of violence, drug use, poverty, faceless, multinational corporations and the unequal division of the world's resources. It's a book full of metaphors, symbolism and contradictions-but it will make you think about where our reality really is these days. Its main protagonist, Daniel Morgan, becomes the leader of the League for a Transformative Society. Yet, he is a walking, talking metaphor of Western civilization's excesses. After all, at only 5 feet, 7 inches tall, Morgan is 250 pounds of solid muscle. Why? Excessive steroid use and weightlifting-and too many moon pies! Moon pies, like the plastics we use every day, that will never get stale or decompose-like a society that's living beyond its means. He, like all of the characters in his off-the-wall look at life on the edge, fights against the very thing that he's become a part of Western civilization's long-reaching arm. Not surprising, Rain Boys is full of symbolism with names such as Earnie and Trapper Killsplenty, Punko and Peltson-not to mention the other main town of Magic City, where the gang goes to recruit members to their cause and have frenzied fun like any proud Alaskan. Along the way, they encounter murder and mayhem with republican pirates and government spy drones. Through it all, Daniel Morgan manages to find love over the Internet by meeting Adeana, his ebony queen of a girlfriend. Amazingly, Adeana actually helps save Morgan from himself and is part of the reason that the League for a Transformative Society finally gets away from just the planning stages. This fascinating story of being on the fringe of society, be it to the far right or far left, culminates with some magic and fantasy-as the mystical ways of the native Tlingits are called upon to save the libertarian socialist faction to live in peace (for now) in the far-away town of Rainville. The United States Navy is turned back by forces unknown to modern man. In the end, a ray of sunshine comes out of a very dark town known as Rainville-and there is hope that somehow, someway, mankind can actually exist with Mother Nature and, maybe more importantly, each other.