As the rest of the world goes wild over smart phones, an odd assortment of eclectic characters hunkers down near Lebanon, Kansas, geographic center of the lower 48, at the middle of a square-mile junk yard where railroads dump old boxcars. The characters live in the boxcars. They don’t like electronic gadgets. They’re fed up with digital life. In a triumph of literary fiction, with caustic comical digs at contemporary society, they create an acerbic satire in search of lost causes. Among them lovely Loretta campaigns to tear down a cell phone tower that rises above the boxcar village. The tower is owned by a communications company whose salesmen are Cheyenne Native Americans. As in all his novels the author remains steady in his belief that well-written literary fiction doesn’t have to be high brow; it has to embrace ideas about destiny in a story line that holds the readers’ attention.