Any Day Now — Terry Bisson

This tour de force, road movie of a novel is a poignant excursion into the last days of the Beats and the radicalized culture of the 1960s, from Kentucky to New York City and beyond. Written in a voice that is warmhearted and hauntingly original, "Any Day Now" is the story of Clay, a small-town boy whose future is all mapped out. It travels as far as an isolated New Mexico commune under threat from a national revolution, with Clay battling to find his place in the new America -- and hoping desperately to forget what happened back East with the girl he loved.

Bisson, whose prose brings to life this wild tale in the vein of Philip Roth's "The Plot Against America," has written a transcendent commentary on America's civil liberties and the perils of growing up, then and now.