Book excerpt: It's Fall 2016 in flyover country and Jude Glick's mother has just died after a long battle with cancer, leaving behind a house in foreclosure, tens of thousands in medical debt, and compounding psychological trauma. Already a struggling standup comic and museum security guard, Jude thinks his life can't get any more humiliating. But poverty and institutional cruelty find new ways to grind him down-and beat him up-just as his childhood bully, Stephen Scheisskopf, becomes a household name as propaganda minister for a proto-fascist Presidential candidate. When this unnamed nominee improbably wins the election and Scheisskopf transforms the Glick family story into a partisan political symbol, Jude can't take it anymore and finally inflicts himself on the people, and country, he hates. Alternating between raw emotionalism, cutting satire, and wild flights of imagination, Gannis's brilliant debut novel builds to an unforeseen and shattering climax.