Benny Henderson works for the Company, an increasingly influential multinational organization. In a city where the occupants embrace freedom from choice, his love for co-worker Louise is the only thing that matters.
 
Enter this world one Moon Beaver, a girl with one foot in the past and the other in the future, who attempts to manipulate time by remaining in the present to achieve heartfelt immortality. A one-woman cult blending a Sixties hippie philosophy with a post–tech boom head for business, Moon Beaver embraces hypocrisy for her own game plan and is indifferent to the consequences (so long as they work out in her favor). Embroiled in her self-perpetuating fantasy, she isolates Benny from his past, leading her bewildered disciple on a whirlwind tour of Bournemouth, Moscow, and Bangkok, drip-feeding her ideology like Chinese water torture.
 
In the meantime, Louise pieces together Moon’s past from the barest of information, trying to find an angle from which she can reclaim her lover. And in American Midwest, an overweight chicken farmer mulls over the detritus of his life and lost love, while stubbornly resisting the takeover of his business by a large, familiar Company.
 
Packed with wisecracks, cynicism, and naive hope, Moon Beaver examines the meaning of “self” in a society where individuality is a commodity and wasted lives are commonplace.

About the author

Readers’ reviews:

“The writing is excellent. It draws you in from the beginning, and holds your attention even when not much is actually happening plotwise. There are superb images and symbols, such as . . . in the fire, ‘the lipstick trace had disappeared, melted away like pink snow in a pale landscape.’ An unusual — and I think successful — feature of the novel are the authorial asides and comments on modern life — and on the novel itself. . . . My own favourite is: ‘But no telephone began to ring, as it might have done in a lesser novel.’ The trips made by Moon and Benny — especially in Thailand — give a wonderful feel for the country. My mouth watered on seeing once again those magical words ‘durian’ and ‘rambutan’!” — Steve Redwood, Whispers of Wickedness

“‘Comic fantasy’ has long been established as a sub-genre, but we’re dealing with something very different here. . . . You might say that [Moon Beaver] contributes to a rather quirky current of ‘comic slipstream,’ even though that elusive thing called slipstream hasn’t been noted for laugh-generating properties. In fact, those with long memories may remember when certain writers of slipstream had been tagged ‘miserablists.’ There isn’t any of that old miserablism here, though serious matters are touched upon with a light hand.” — Roseanne Rabinowitz, LauraHird.com

“If you like novels that take risks with narrative and where you don’t know what to expect from one page to the next, if you want to read books that are not afraid to tackle the big issues, but do so in a non-portentous way and with a smile on their face, then the sexy and sassy Moon Beaver may just be the girl you’re looking for.” — Peter Tennant, ttapress.com

“An oxymoron for the ages: Moon Beaver is a REAL satire. Packed with the disposition of time in relation to human life, Andrew Hook’s Moon Beaver delves into the inner strength and power of the human race. Surrounded with humor as well as class, Moon Beaver is a must read, especially at a cross-roads in your life.” — Antonio Derosa, Goodreads

trade paperback 5.25" X 8.25" 250 pp. list price $19 ISBN-13: 978-0-9728321-5-1 ISBN-10: 0-9728321-5-7