The Tilted Earth

"The Tilted Earth" by Hopwood Award winning writer, Nick Jacobs.

ADVISORY: Book contains adult language, humor and situations.

(*Note: Kindle version has Active Table of Contents.)

Short Synopsis --
At luck’s end, a young man dreams of reuniting with his long-lost girlfriend. Desperate to see her again, he takes a job as a human lab rat, participating in the clinical study of a powerful new drug. Joined by a group of misfits in his 40-day confinement, the hero’s body and soul are severely tested by the hallucinatory drug and the memories it stirs. (Based on actual events.)

Full Synopsis --
K.R. Jackson is at a crossroads in life. His luck has run dry, he’s behind on his rent and he’s having nightmares about his one true love, a young woman with whom he lost contact years ago. Although he is named after a pair of great poets (Keats and Rossetti), K.R. is certainly feeling less than poetic. Currently hustling as a hack screenwriter in the literary anthills of Los Angeles, even that work has dried up as the writers’ guild is on strike.

Determined to pull himself out of his emotional and financial morass, K.R. accepts work of last resort -- he will become a lab rat, subjecting himself to pharmaceutical drug trials. For forty days and nights, he and a tattered group of able-bodied but hard luck volunteers will live in a medical clinic under the influence of a powerful test drug that only magnifies the bizarre, cuckoo’s nest environment they encounter. For K.R., the unknown test drug’s dizzying side effects often cause him to lapse in and out of time and reality, revisiting critical events in his life, especially with women, from a warped perspective. K.R.’s drug-altered reality even blends in passages from many of the great authors he admires.

Joining K.R. on his controlled-drug odyssey are a variety of low-end hustlers and wandering souls that Los Angeles seems to specialize in -- a struggling but charismatic actor, a young battle-tested Iraq war vet who is eager to return to the battlefield for a hidden reason, a tattooed philosopher who looks more like a bouncer, a trio of immigrants dreaming of making it big in America, and even a chubby innocent nicknamed Billy Muffins. All of these dreamers hope the money they earn will set their course in life right, however they soon learn the goal is not only to endure the mind-numbing test drug but also the daily regimen of medical testing, bloodletting, bad food and 24-hour confinement. Also testing the dreamers is the underlying battle of wills between themselves and the staff, especially the supervising nurse.

As the effects of confinement and the drug continue, the young men begin to doubt if they will leave in the same condition as when they arrived. They soon realize none of them will, and for some, maybe it’s for the better. (Based on actual events.)