Buddy Holly Is Alive and Well on Ganymede

Bradley Denton breaks into hardcover with Buddy Holly Alive and Well on Ganymede, an extraordinary novel of realism and wild fantasy in the postmodern vein. This book brews a heady concoction out of such diverse elements as space aliens living in disguise next door in suburban Kansas; a resurrected Buddy Holly appearing on TV worldwide with the planet Jupiter in the background, on all channels, twenty-four hours a day; a desperately depressed computer-store clerk, Oliver Vale, whose nutty mother worships rock 'n' roll. What results is a car-and-motorcycle chase across the southern Midwest ending in a huge revival rally at the drive-in movie theater. Attending are a motorcycle gang, a murderous renegade secret agent, a sympathetic psychiatrist, a robot Doberman who likes beer, various alien beings in human disguise, and thousands of warned people whose TVs won't work light.

Along with the strange and wonderful aspects of the story comes a strong sense of what life and the world have gone through over the last thirty years, a gently jaundiced view of the world at present, and a deep and abiding love of rock 'n' roll and its saying powers.