An upmarket, darkly comic literary novel exploring identity and the absurdities of contemporary culture.
THE VOLCANO GOD (95,000 words) is about man's search for authenticity on a slippery surface. And violent escape from the discovery.
Zero-charisma, semi-divorced, middle-aged, and self-exiled, Bill Lee runs away from home in a reckless search for his one true identity. What he finds is unsatisfactory. Starting a cult and a book club along the way wasn't supposed to be part of the journey. Neither was murder.
THE VOLCANO GOD is for fans of Chuck Klosterman and Warren Zevon - pop-culture comic despair and deadpan escalation. It shares a literary tradition of scarred middle-aged men running away with Wellness by Nathan Hill (Knopf, 2023) and The Rest of Our Lives, Ben Markovits (Summit Books, 2025).
I write novels for Gen X and the people who love them. I spent thirty years helping sell-out mega-corporations tell sustainability stories that were, charitably, aspirational - work that has left me with guilty moments of regret. As promotion for my consulting, I self-published a monkey-wrencher’s guide to authenticity in marketing, and a collection of essays on sustainability and pop-culture. These projects, along with a master's in English, concentration in writing and cultural theory, gave me the tools with which to exorcize my own Gen X demons.
John Rooks
Portland, Maine