Book excerpt: Troy Jacobson has always tried to stay invisible; the Snake, the palsy he has wrestled with his entire life, usually has other ideas. But in the spring of 1969, Troy finds a place where he can be accepted when he and two old friends, Jesse and Coleman, decide to start a commune of their own in Denton, Texas. They bring in other friends and lovers and it works for a few months until the hot summer day when Coleman hits on a girl that Jesse brings home from a gig. R.E., Coleman's girlfriend and the one steadying influence in his life, tries to help him balance the demons that drive him to make all the wrong choices. When an expensive car pulls up outside one morning, the men in suits inside set in motion a series of events that take them back into family histories that range from the Utopian communes of the 1850s, to the early days of the Beats, and to the mansions of the ultra-rich in Fort Worth, and then forward onto roads leading away from Texas and out west into the unknown.