Most so-called “epic” novels are the stuff of motion picture blockbusters: tragic love stories, diabolical villains, great battles with gigantic armies colliding upon endless flat plains of death. Yet in the real world, for most people, the greatest battles of their lives are the ones fought inside their own heads——and the villains are creatures both self-created and self-nurtured. Meet Charlie Barnes. Age 24, bright, college-educated, talented … and a failure. Now he’s back home in Los Angeles after a disastrous two-year pilgrimage to New York and back. No more time to fail. Time to give it one last shot. Set against the backdrop of the 1980 Iranian Hostage Crisis and colored by panoramas of California’s fabled Santa Anita Racetrack, Where Gods Gamble is Eastland’s emotional dance through the history, hope, and failed promise of America. A reluctant hero, young Barnes is a typical, willing victim of America’s manufactured myths and sweet, seductive slogans. But now he has an important decision to make. Will he pursue the depressing, false security of a normal 9-to-5 job? Will he select the far more difficult——yet infinitely more fulfilling——career of a professional gambler? Or will he succumb to his own internal demons in trying to sort it all out …