McKenzie Rising: An American Frolic featuring environmental sculptor Harley Buckthorn is a novel of laughter and redemption.
A cultural satire, McKenzie Rising follows the MegaMax Corporation’s (Microsoft out ExxonMobil by Deutsche Bank) venture to turn the upper McKenzie valley into an upscale development, the Estates at Rancho Rio. Having already bought out the regional state university, MegaMax is poised to complete its acquisition of the upper McKenzie overseen by Marta Juggernaut, Wharton MBA and project manager at Rancho Rio, and Mark Neighbors, Northwest Acquisitor for MegaMax.
This outcome is opposed by the improbable coalition of Buckthorn; Sheila Wallop, manager of the local bar, the Pour House Tavern; Sarah Trip, feminist poet; C. C. (Cash Crop) Fellows, local marijuana grower; Martin Devaney, retired from the Federal Bureau of Weights and Measures and proprietor of Devaney’s Mercantile, and the Gang of Five (Hiro Ishimatsu, Imperial Japanese Air Force [1945], Tony Ten-Toes, Jr., native Qnxtqkl; D. B. Cooper, air pirate when air piracy was still cool; Carlos Castaneda, publicist, and Sasquatch).
Their work is abetted by a Dickensian ensemble of supporting characters, many of whom are chronically sidetracked from the heroic community purpose by various amatory diversions. This group includes President Walden York of MegaMax University along with his provost, Lunelle Johnson Bender; a feckless professor of biology Freddy Waxwroth, and Mabel Goodchuck, professor of art. Others notably in the mix are E. E. (Earlier and Earlier) Everclear, federal air traffic controller at McKenzie Field; Stanley B. Jeebers, local refuse company proprietor and designated African-American; Amanda Pennypacker, Ford Foundation community development specialist; the Fell Faller, legendary logger; Oedipus Gypopolis, proprietor of a pre-owned car business, Oedipus Wrecks; Barry Buncombe, faux nature writer; Beau Zipp, randy stock car driver; Chuck Wepner, a canine boxer with a rubber fetish, and Reverend Endwell of the Free Will Apostolic Church of the Doublewide (McKenzie Synod).
A lusty environmental picaresque, McKenzie Rising satirizes our shortfalls while celebrating our resilience and the triumph of community. As in all true comedies, the contending factions marry in the end (even MegaMax, which is acquired in a leveraged buyout by Easy Ed’s Pawn and Appliance). As an instrument of social critique, satire operates on the premise that human folly is correctable. McKenzie Rising is intended as a corrective to some of the amendable follies we lug with us as we careen on into the (post)-Trump, (post)-Corona years.
A Rabelaisian comedy of character and plot, language and landscape, McKenzie Rising inhabits the quadrant of American humor defined by Kurt Vonnegut, Richard Brautigan, Thomas Pynchon, and Tom Robbins-A Confederacy of Dunces transplanted to the American West. While Robert Redford is unlikely to mistake McKenzie Rising for A River Runs Through It, the Coen brothers might find a film here.
