In love, but broke, the sixty-eight-year-old bookseller, Michael McGeraughty, has converted a fifty-year-old camper-trailer to a small bookshop of about 1500 volumes, to be pulled by his thirty-year-old pick-up truck. His idea is to be a modern-day ‘book peddler’ in an American tradition going back to Parson Weems and once reimagined by Christopher Morley in Parnassus on Wheels. Meanwhile, he is still pursued by the FBI who believe he is connected to a libertarian revolutionary group (which he is), with designs on overthrowing the authoritarian government (true enough) through violence (which he is not). His aim is simply to wander the back roads of the nation, looking for ‘First Principles,’ and the characters that might make them work, while espousing good books and selling enough of those to pay for food and gas. His wish is that his true love, Deirdre Roberts, newspaper reporter extraordinaire, would accompany him on his odyssey. Instead, his only company is a middle-aged history professor, out of work, and most recently living with his mother.

https://www.vincentmccaffrey.com/2022/12/20/the-invention-of-man-a-novel/”>Books]