Book excerpt: "Readers will be enthralled, chilled, and astonished." -- Tom Piccirilli, author of A Choir of Ill Children. In the first of many references to H. P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu," this thoroughly unique novel begins with the rise of the lost city of R'lyeh, portending certain doom for human existence. The witness to this deadly harbinger is Jack Kerouac, who recruits fellow beats Neal Cassady and William S. Burroughs for a cross-country road trip that will climax in a confrontation with a murderous cult.