“Add to that the folks who made their fortunes peddling shovels to manic gold bugs on their way up to the frozen Yukon River, and the city’s muddy streets, the bars and saloons and taverns and brothels, and sailing ships and economic exploitation — and if you let the tawdry history and weather conditions, and low salaries and long winter nights wash over you like a January drizzle…”

The Apocalyptus Tree is an unconventional comic novel, which starts off in Seattle and takes a group of characters on a three-day-long vision quest, over the mountains to the Columbia River Valley and points east. Among other things, they’re looking for the place where the political-spiritual left meets the political-spiritual right. But some have ulterior motives.