FreedomLand

Can the Red and Blue extremes of America ever get along? Can men and women? Possibly...if held at gunpoint and an African leopard is involved.

In one memorable night Gage Randolph steals the Confederacy's most sacred Civil War relic, gives a ride to America's dumbest domestic terrorist, and accidentally kidnaps a liberal cable TV host.

This wildly incompatible group needs to lie low and a bankrupt restaurant run by Gage's friend, Bud Roy Roemer, is the perfect hideout.

Extricating themselves from a litany of felonies―only some of which they committed on purpose―is complicated by an African leopard Bud Roy's fiancé brings home to join the Roemer household and a tenacious deputy sheriff intent on righting a past wrong.

Trying to stay one step ahead of the law and out of paw's reach of carnivorous African mega fauna, Bud Roy and Gage seek guidance and inspiration from two uniquely grotesque American institutions: a talk radio host who dispenses pellets of white rage over the airwaves four hours a day, and a lawyer with very few ethical redlines.

The answer to their problem, they discover, is cruising 13 miles off the North Carolina Coast.

Freedomland is an exploratory oil rig converted into a luxurious, mobile, sovereign state by a tax-hating Silicon Valley billionaire who loves America so much he can't wait to leave it.

For this collection of misfits―and one angry leopard―getting to Freedomland proves difficult.

But leaving is murder.

FreedomLand's satiric look into the ailing heart of America skewers the political right and left as they battle over the issues animating the American conversation: gun control; the wasteland that is talk radio and cable news; the idiocy of white supremacy; misogyny; remembrance of the Civil War; and the increasing disparity between the super rich and everyone else. Why? Because sometimes things are so bad all you can do is laugh.

Christopher Jackson's life on the move―over thirty years living in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Africa―has provided him with a unique perspective on the United States. The bemused, affectionate, sometimes exasperated detachment that only professional expatriates can develop for the land of their birth informs Jackson's writing as he explores the sometimes dark but always absurd corners of American life. Christopher Jackson is the author of FreedomLand and the forthcoming novel Deep Reservations. He currently resides with his wife and two children somewhere in Africa where, he maintains, thirty minutes of U.S. cable news per day―if he can stand it―provides the fodder for another ten novels.