Dugan Under Ground — Tom De Haven

The final installment of De Haven's dazzling tour of twentieth-century America, revealed through the world of the comic strips and their creators. In 1967, the Summer of Love, Roy Looby, a gifted young cartoonist, deserts his mentor and joins the drop-outs of San Francisco's Haight Ashbury. There Looby creates The Imp Eugene, a libidinous comic book character who is a far cry from his mentor's signature figure, Derby Dugan—the cheerful icon of a more optimistic generation. Celebrated and vilified for his creation, Looby soon disappears, rumored to have lost his mind during the drug-fueled creation of a cartoon masterpiece, and it's to his long-suffering brother, Nick, to find him. A long, strange trip across a wildly changing America, Dugan Under Ground is a rich, inventive tale celebrating the mythic qualities of American popular culture.