Three outsiders cross paths in an alternate America that's been divided in two In a dystopian Los Angeles, Cale is a newly released political prisoner under surveillance. Beset by dark visions and relegated to working in a desolate library, he's told, without explanation, that he's "the one everyone's looking for." For Catherine, a mysterious South American beauty, the crossing is no less extreme: Leaving her tribal life, she undergoes various confinements and escapes before winding up at the door of a Hollywood screenwriter. Finally Jack Mick Lake, possessed by numerology, must negotiate a river all his own. Stark and ethereal, Steve Erickson's tales connect to form a luminous and passionate whole.
"One of the most notable novels of the year. This book is a warning to those who lack the courage to cross the rubicon of their imaginations."
The New York Times Book Review
"The best novel I've read this year."
Greil Marcus, The Village Voice
"Erickson is brilliant, period. Here in Rubicon Beach is a musical prose of utter clarity that can weld the abstract and the concrete, the daily and the surreal, into a seamless whole. Here is a mind that can both conceive visions and follow them over the edge. Here . . . is a writer, whose words reach you where you live."
