In 1964, after the assassination of Fidel Castro and "The Destruction" that led to the annihilation of much of the East Coast, President Kennedy moves the nation's capital to Wichita, Kansas, where Robert works as a copywriter for the ad agency Batton, Bumstead, Durstine, and Osborn. Hoping to receive the permission of Norman Mailer to join an exclusive writers colony in the besieged city of Estonia (formerly Easton), Pennsylvania, Robert, haunted by his muse Emily Dickinson, contrives to brave the ravaged, desolated inland to Brooklyn (Bruh-Klyn). But BBD&O's nefarious founder, Burt Bumstead, instead orders Robert to assassinate Mailer, and assigns the gorgeous Eldritch Djinn as Robert's accomplice. In their deadly odyssey, Robert and Eldritch are set upon by contract killers in Kansas, pirates along the Kansas and Missouri Canal, zombies in Illinois, suicidal gun molls in Ohio, and rebellious gunslingers in Pennsylvania. A deadly reprisal by halflings brings this non-stop alternate-universe adventure to its astonishing conclusion.