Rut -- Scott Phillips

A phrase I don't think I've read in a novel before: "frog orgy." And in Rut, you also get a detailed description of froggie sex. Don't think I've read about anything like that before, either.

But then Rut might not be the you expected from Scott Phillips. It's not a crime novel. It's set 30 or 40 years in the future in the small Colorado town of Gower, which used to be a ski resort but which is now not much of anything. We don't learn a lot about the rest of the country, but it seems that the U. S. isn't much of anything, either. China's the power now.

Gower has a corrupt mayor, a veterinarian who's now a school principal, and an assortment of other odd characters, including a young woman who's doing post-graduate work that has to do with those frogs I mentioned. They go about their daily lives, meet, mingle, entangle, disentangle. Travelers return, people die, and in the end things and people have changed, some of them for the better, though no one's sure just what's going to happen next.

Rut's a book that, if it appeared in the time that Phillips envisions, might be thought of as a mainstream novel. Now it's a glimpse into a future that might scare you or might not. Phillips gives you clean prose, crisp writing, and characters you'll care about. It's well worth a look to see, and all you have to do to get a copy of the book is to ask for it. Here's that link again.