Book description
In the rainswept summer of 1968, Rose sets off for the United States
from Kentish Town to meet a man she knows as Washington Harold, in her
suitcase a polka-dot dress and a one-way ticket. In a country rocked by
the assassination of Martin Luther King and a rising groundswell of
violence, they are to join forces in search of the charismatic and
elusive Dr Wheeler - oracle, guru and redeemer - whom Rose credits with
rescuing her from a terrible childhood, and against whom Harold nurses a
silent grudge. As they trail their quarry, zigzagging through America in
a camper van, the odd couple - Rose, damaged child of grey postwar
Britain, and nervous, obsessive, driven Harold - encounter a ragged
counter-cultural army of Wheeler's acolytes, eddying among dangerous
currents of obscure dissent and rage. But somewhere in the wide American
darkness, Dr Wheeler is waiting. Beryl Bainbridge wrote seventeen
novels, two travel books and five plays for stage and television, she
was shortlisted for the Booker Prize five times, and won literary awards
including the Whitbread Prize and the Author of the Year Award at the
British Book Awards. She died in July 2010.
