Broken Land Dreams
Writer David Forbes has written a satirical love song to Brooklyn and American democracy
Broken Land Dreams, By David Forbes, 301 pages, $15 paperback; $9.95 kindle. Available through Amazon.com.
Jacob Traum, the protagonist in David Forbe’s brilliant and entertaining first novel, Broken Land Dreams, is a curmudgeon, a self-described “brooding, grumpy, white male lefty Boomer. ” Since retiring from his job as a high school social worker, he has been worrying about the unraveling of progressive values, visible at every turn in the “broken land of Brooklyn.” Schools are banning books, restricting curricula, and monitoring ideas. On top of this, COVID is raging, his wife, Maya, has left him, and the political right-wing seems increasingly ascendant. In short, he’s miserable.
Then, on a random afternoon, Jacob is visited by a shape-shifting “hired power” named Xen Kohen who takes him on a journey to Hell. There, he meets a variety of rats who bear a strange resemblance to people Jacob despises, including Ayn Rand, Elon Musk, and Rudolph Guiliani. His exploration of this subterranean environment – and his conversations with these hated beings -- gives him a detailed understanding of the ideology undergirding the contemporary US rightwing, from the elevation of individual success over collective well-being to policies that reward greed and endless consumption.
Jacob is repulsed, and for good reason. But thanks to contact with six former students and a group of men who call themselves The Brooklyn Codgers, a plan to defeat the Right comes into focus. The ingenious organizing that unfolds is a clear takedown of all things MAGA-like. It also extends to the many groups that prop up this ideology, including those Forbes dubs Fux Fake News, Rat Boy Militias, the Ratpublicans, Billionaire Dark Money Oligarch PlutoRats, and CorpoRat Executives. It’s funny—with bite.
Broken Land Dreams, is part political rant, part plea for social justice, and part love song to a more egalitarian Brooklyn. It’s also a call to action. Moreover, because Forbes weaves both magical realism and quotes from an array of literary, political, and philosophical luminaries into the text, he has crafted something that defies easy categorization.
Suffice it to say, it’s an engaging and provocative read.