Not Fade Away (Abacus Books) - Softcover

George Gastin is a Bay Area tow-truck operator who wrecks cars as part of an insurance scam. One of the cars he is hired to demolish is a snow-white Cadillac that was supposed to be a present for the Big Bopper, who died in the Iowa plane crash that killed Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. Gastin has a change of heart and takes off in the car, heading for Texas where the Bopper is buried. Armed with a thousand hits of Benzedrine and chased by adversaries real and imagined, Gastin navigates a road trip that covers many miles and states of mind. Traveling in time from the Beat era to the dawn of the sixties, from the coffeehouses of North Beach to the open plains of America, Gastin picks up some extraordinary hitchhikers-the self-proclaimed "world's greatest salesman," the Reverend Double-Gone Johnson, and a battered housewife with a box of old 45s. As the miles and sleepless hours roll by, Gastin's trip becomes a blur of fantasy and reality fueled by a soundtrack of classic rock 'n' roll.

"Reads like Kerouac's On the Road as it might have been written by Hunter S. Thompson."-The Plain Dealer (Cleveland)

"A wild paean to rock 'n' roll, the freedom of the open road and the powers of unfettered imagination. Dodge pushes language to its outer limits. He stretches credulity and expands the boundaries of the novel itself. His surreal voyage into the chaos of night carries him into the heart of America's darkest psychological landscapes. Not Fade Away shakes, rattles, and rolls."-San Francisco Chronicle

Jim Dodge is the author of Fup and Stone Junction.

Jim Dodge is the author of three novels - Fup, Not Fade Away and Stone Junction - and a collection so poetry and short prose, Rain on the River.He lives on an isolated ranch in western Sonoma County and has been by turns an apple picker, a carpet layer, a teacher, a professional gambler, a shepherd for five years and a woodcutter. He currently works as an environmental restorer - primarily tree planting, log-jam removal and erosion control.