17-year old Philly resident, Van Ripplewink, 'dies' in a hit and run accident in 1966; he 'wakes' in 2015, to confront a world vastly different from the one he knew. Temporarily off balance, lost, and alone, he makes his way with the help of a kindly Gas Company engineer, his beautiful niece, and a violent homeless man. Mainstream/literary fiction in the style of The Bonfire of the Vanities