As the liberal principles upon which the nation was built give way to conservative forces bent on concentrating power in the hands of the few, this novel sketches a picture of a corporate government determined to repeal our rights, degrade our environment, silence our voices, and sacrifice our children to a new oppressive world order.

Shedding light on this dark picture is Peter Freton, a well-read young man who grew up in California and worked as a Peace Corps volunteer in Africa and a teacher in Japan. He has returned to Arizona to stay with his parents, enroll his children in school, find work, buy a house, and ? unbeknownst to himself ? confront the depraved values he began criticizing after the 2000 election. Peter Freton, the critical thinking instructor, criticizes the right by evoking the liberal principles of equality, fairness, liberty, open-mindedness, and freedom; his voice replete with an understanding of life and human nature is disparaged and sometimes ignored. The Good American is both intimate and global, a vivid and moving account of a young man's battle against the establishment and his discovery of what it means to be a human being.