A Relatively Young Man Book

The author Budge Moss, fiftyish liberal aging none too gracefully, is thoroughly disenchanted with the results of the 2004 U.S. presidential election, which he thought his candidate had a hands-down chance of winning. Budge's reaction is to drive to Canada to check out the scene, with the nebulous plan to move there permanently if things look promising. Concurrently, his live-in companion, Matty Klein, is off on a golf vacation, so Budge and his cat, Ragu, head north. In Canada, Budge drinks good beer and enjoys the ambience of Kingston, Ontario, a colorful mid-size metropolis, but gets an employment query turned down, and quickly runs out of money. He and his pet are back on Maryland's eastern shore before he knows it, whereupon Matty, who has also returned home, hands him an envelope with an invitation to lecture at a writer s conference at local Washington College. Naturally, Budge can only accept. The honorarium is a thousand dollars. The action is just beginning for our author manque, who both admires and dislikes the other invitees, each more famous and prolifically published than he. As the hilarious, faux-literary plot unfolds, Budge is actually invited to return to Canada, under circumstances that are sure to raise the reader's eyebrows as well as his own. A Relatively Young Man, the third novel in the Budge Moss series, follows Washed Up With A Broken Heart In Rock Hall (2004) and Wrongful Reconciliation (2005).