Where Gods Gamble: A Tale of American Mythology

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, 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 …