Spinning Dixie
Eric Dezenhall
Dunne, December 26 2006, $24.95
ISBN: 031234063X

In 2005, the Global War on Terrorism comes home when a suicide bomber commits kamikaze at a Philadelphia Phillies home game. This attack on American soil places President James Lee Truitt on the defensive, but his relatively new Press Secretary Jonah Eastman provides dark Jersey TURNPIKE FLAMEOUT humor that enrages everyone, especially Philly fanatics. Jonah is fired for his insensitivity towards the president and his party's needs.

Before Jonah can head north from DC, his high school sweetheart (at least for one glorious summer of love), Claudine Polk arrives at his former office to ask him to help save her family's Rattle & Snap Tennessee plantation. Jonah, thinking he can relive his greatest moments in Atlantic City, agrees, though he suspects his beautiful southern belle has not come to town seeking circumcised kosher hot dog. Still, hoping to get lucky, he begins an out of control Godzilla spin campaign that brings into his game the president, political action committee, Civil War re-enactors, the military, and the mob to name a few, all caught in his web. A second civil war seems imminent, as Operation Dixie Knish causes Truitt to approve countermeasure Operation Enough Already.

As always Jonah spins out of control, leading to a zany way out domestic crisis thriller that could only be written by Eric Dezenhall. The insane storyline is action-packed as it rotates between 2005 and 1980 (so Jonah was too young for the original summer of love). The cast is purposely stereotyped as war veterans, mobsters, Tennessee Volunteers from the U of T, and some Vanderbilt intellects, and an assortment of politicians, all caught in the spinmiester's web. Though some of the sub-plotting never bridges back to Jonah's mission to repeat his teen conquest as a forty something male, fans of the series will enjoy his SPINNING DIXIE out of control.