The Swallows in the Boathouse

Sometimes, a historical event is so riddled with false assumptions, so replete with bad decisions, so preposterous that the only way to deal with it is metaphorically. Nowadays, that would have to include the two-term Bush years. The Boathouse is a fable in the spirit of Orwell's "Animal Farm," which, of course, took on communism. The main characters here are not Iraqis, but besieged swallows under attack and then imprisoned by the new owner of their boathouse. He is a bumbling commander-in-chief, just like you-know-who. Captain Don comes to the bird's rescue and the plot takes wings from there. The Boathouse is a simple story about lost innocence in a full-blown parody of war. It traces the border where fiction and nonfiction meet, which is where the Bush presidency, itself, dwelt. The book takes readers on a rollicking ride from an idyllic lake in Northeast US up into Canada to meet the Lord of the Black Flies in his underground lair. Along the way, the readers meet JP Winslow, the PR Pro, who brags about his efforts in starting the first Iraq War; Lisa Norstrom, the young TV journalist, who is searching for some "gravitas" in her life; Cleodis T. Cunningham, who preaches his "bio-bias" theory, and the three swallows, who, many times, seem like the most sensible beings in the book.