The Locust People - Paperback

by Robert E. Petras (Author)

"Time is a river, and someone somewhere is pissing in it." Dive into the wild, weird, and wonderful world of bizarre events blogger Whitman as he discovers a dormant group of beings set on curing the world from harm.

Whitman's "Holy Gale" blog chronicles the peculiar, the eccentric, and the unconventional - but even he wasn't expected to run into a group of Shaquille O'Neal-sized Locust People rising after millennia from their subterranean nests.

Whitman is a struggling writer who resides on Mullet Top, a knoll overlooking T-town and the center of hydraulic fracturing for Marcellus shale. There, the millions of gallons of chemical-laced water pumped into the hills stir the Locust People, causing the giant winged species to inflict mayhem, death, and destruction upon the fracking operations and T-town.

Suddenly Whitman finds himself and his latest soulmate, Haggie, within a reality not unlike the truth-cheated scenarios in his "Holy Gale" blog. Their new age journey begins at a Big Foot forgery with his ass prints in the snow; wanders to Smiley Face Stonehenge, a moonlit pizza projectile assault upon a giant Dean Martin mural; and continues through a pilgrimage to the shrine of Duct Tape Jesus, a metaphysical arrangement of Andy Warhol's Campbell's Soup cans. Along the way, they encounter yoga contests, a graffiti war between evangelists and Satanists, a table- top game of football using live locusts, and an induction into the Alien Anal Probe Hall of Fame.

The Locust People is an enjoyable, well-plotted novel for adults and any environmentally-conscious reader. Its cast of colorful characters drives the narrative, which has more twists and turns than the Kama Sutra and ultimately reveals everything in the universe is concertedly connected.