Somewhere in America, Somewhere in America

Previously published as: Ignorance, USAWhen Theodore “Teddy” Epps—freakishly wounded Gulf War veteran and mayor of Ignorance, Pop. 6587—declares his intention to run for the seat in the United States Congress currently occupied by twenty-term incumbent Jebediah Maxwell, the congressman’s wife sends retired FBI agent turned private investigator Pamela Nichols to their home district to engineer some means of discrediting him. Pam’s task is simple: Find a weakness she can exploit that will drive a wedge between a blindly ambitious and avaricious Teddy Epps and Ignorance’s ultra-conservative electorate.Add to that mix:a) The mayor’s miserly and irascible 97-year-old father, Elmer.b) A group of Elmer’s one-percenter buddies with a developed penchant for illegal substances, all of whom are determined to live to be a hundred-twenty years old.c) a frustrated local librarian lately divorced from the town’s high school football coach and the recent workplace victim of a book banning purge instigated by Ignorance’s fundamentalist Christian element.d) Private investigator Pam Nichols’ phony offer to pay Elmer ten-million-dollars for two thousand acres of farmland he owns, ostensibly to build a huge organic pig farm just two miles downwind of town, the stench from which would render Ignorance all but uninhabitable.To these specific ingredients add a predictable measure human nature, shake, and pour yourself an adult dose. The resultant cocktail is guaranteed make you either giddy drunk from all the good fun, or apoplectic, depending upon where you sit on either side of the Great American Ideological Divide. As the sign outside the tiny town says…IGNORANCE IS BLISS