Before the story even begins, we are told in A Note From The Author that, “As you become immersed in the story, certain scenes and characters will likely feel familiar to you. That is intentional, as this story takes place during a time in American history very much like the one we find ourselves living in now.”

Then why is there a fucking pay phone on page 1? Page 1!

Verbatim, from the very beginning (seriously this is how it begins):

‘Eli Churchill was a talker. Once he got rolling it was unusual for him to stop and listen, but now a distant noise had him concerned.

“Hold on,” he whispered.

He cradled the pay-phone receiver against his shoulder, glanced down the narrow, rutted Mojave dirt road he’d traveled to get here, and then up the long, dark way in the other direction.’

A pay phone?

Along a dirt road in Mojave, California?

I am immersed in this story no further than that pay phone.

And that road. Which I know a lot about for some reason. It’s narrow, rutted, in Mojave, made of dirt, traversible, long, and dark. And has a pay phone.

This book is going to be good.

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