When I started looking for this book, which takes a light-hearted, fictional look at the conspiracy theories surrounding President Obama, I began to think that maybe, just maybe, it was another crazy dream.
I had heard a review on NPR, praising the book. But then, that's a well-known liberal station that deals in what our current president calls fake news. Still, it sounded good, so I plugged it into my books-to-buy app. But mysteriously, the app could not find the book. And when I visited my local Barnes & Noble, it was not in stock. Moreover, the clerk told me the B&N website had it as "unavailable."
Hmmm.
Three other local bookstores -- one chain, two independents -- also didn't have it. No one at any of those stores had heard of it.
Double hmmm.
So, I finally traveled 800 miles from home, on my Thanksgiving trip to New York. And there, in the Oblong Books and Music store in Millerton, N.Y., I found it. I had to ask, but the clerk knew it and took me directly to it. It exists!
Seriously. It exists.
By the way, have I mentioned how much I love this bookstore? If you're ever in upstate New York, plan a visit.
Anyway. Here's the review.
This book is good, if uneven. But that's to be expected with a short story collection written by different writers. Some you will love. Some are just OK. Others you will deem unreadable, and move on. That's what I did.
But here are three I really liked:
One portrays Michelle Obama as the leader of a group of women officials who have second lives as a group of vigilantes, attacking pharmaceutical executives who blatantly raise prices on live-saving drugs. Obama's Book Club persuades the men to reverse position.
The second is a Star Trek takeoff, with Bah'rack playing the role of the logical Vulcan, and Dr. Joe Biden as the ship's high-strung doctor. Sometime in the future, the ship's captain notices an incursion in the space-time continuum, and concludes that Klingons have travelled back in time to the mid-20th Century. So the Vulcan and the doctor are sent to earth to fix the problem. Biden has to drop the doctor, since his knowledge is too advanced for this world. Bah'rack -- whom you will note is neither American nor even Earthling -- takes the Anglican version of his name. And the rest is history. OK, alternative history.
The third story is about the Second Amendment supporters who attack a hospital seeking the identity and location of the Obama Death Panels. Good characters and finely written.
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