Tiger in a Trance
A Novel
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4.8 • 5 Ratings
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- $13.99
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Max Ludington has created a stunningly self-assured American road novel that captures the drug induced euphoria and paranoia of a Grateful Dead concert, while simultaneously probing the self-destructive tendencies of its head-strong protagonist.
Traveling around the country in his old Volvo following the Dead for over a year, eighteen-year-old Jason Burke discovers how much more lucrative selling acid is than selling T-shirts. Liberally dabbling in his product, his judgment gets cloudier and he starts snorting heroin and sleeping with his supplier’s girlfriend, a green-eyed beauty named Jane. Jason also meets Melanie, a rebellious one-armed high-school girl who’s youthful abandonment leads her deeper into the nomadic world of the Dead. And as his addiction takes hold, Jason reacquaints himself with an old friend of his late father’s who’s near the end of his days. While he struggles with the ghosts of his own past and his exceedingly tenuous future, Jason has to decide where his heart lies and which road will ultimately take him there.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ludington revisits the magical, musical mystery tour that was the Grateful Dead in this rock novel cum coming-of-age story about a young man who joins the legion of fans that followed the band cross-country. Prep school dropout Jason Burke is the first-person narrator, dealing drugs, selling T-shirts and worshipping the guitar solos of Jerry Garcia on the group's 1985 tour. In a swirl of partying and sex, Jason pairs up first with Jane, the alluring girlfriend of a fellow dealer, then becomes more seriously involved with 17-year-old Melanie, a precocious, one-armed groupie. The novel turns darker when Jason learns that another brief rendezvous with a Dead fan has produced a child, and then darker still when he falls into the abyss of heroin addiction. The rock material is solid and colorful Ludington affectionately but unsentimentally captures the Dead scene and the portrayal of Jason's addiction is haunting, especially when he abandons an old family friend who is dying and wanders into a seedy part of the Bay area in search of a score. Jason, despite his aimlessness, is a serious, thoughtful character. His family history his journalist father was killed in Syria when he was a boy gives the novel extra depth, taking it beyond the tropes of the road novel. This is a searching, accomplished debut.
