In the tradition of Robert Stone and Denis Johnson, a darkly authentic road novel set in the nomadic world of the Deadheads.

It is 1985, and eighteen-year-old Jason Burke is a full-time Deadhead, following the Grateful Dead around the country and surviving by selling T-shirts. But Jason is about to discover the lucrative ease of selling drugs. He’ll also meet the women who will play key romantic roles in his life: Jane, the tall, green-eyed girlfriend of a drug dealer; and Melanie, a rebellious high school girl, one-armed as the result of a car accident. Jason’s one-night tryst with Melanie sets the stage for their future before Jason takes off for California with the tour.

Jason has a past of his own. He grew up overseas, the son of a journalist, and when he was eleven his father was killed in a Syrian prison, accused of spying. Jason has never dealt directly with his father’s death, and his detachment has estranged him from his mother and his older brother.

In Carmel, Jason stops for the night to see Harry, an old friend of his father. He learns that Harry, a rock-and-roll-loving alcoholic, is dying of emphysema. Eventually, Jason falls into drug dealing in earnest; hits the road with Melanie; is pursued by private detectives; and returns to nurse Harry through his final illness, all the while battling his own increasingly serious heroin addiction. The end of the road is near.

Combining the high spirits of youth with the sometimes jaded wisdom of the counterculture, Tiger in a Trance is a startlingly sure-handed and accomplished debut novel that recalls such generational classics as Less Than Zero and The Beach . It shows how music, drugs, and especially love can be enchanting, and how the most bewitching things can also be the most bedeviling.