The Missing Tiller

An excerpt from an excerpt from a new novel on Upton Sinclair called U.S.! by Chris Bachelder, in which titles for a book on earthworms are imagined...and said book is then imaginatively sent to the remainder bin.

Sigh.

NPR : 'U.S.!': Resurrecting Upton Sinclair: " The strong, near-rotten smell in the car made me remember the way the summer rains would bring up long, knotty earthworms in the streets of my childhood neighborhood. It occurs to me now that I haven't seen worms like that in years. Perhaps the earthworm is a bellwether, a coal-mine canary, yet another harbinger of planetary doom. No doubt there will soon be a book, called The Missing Tiller, perhaps, or Dearthworm, blurbed as 'quite possibly the best of the disappearing animal books.' And the books about disappearing frogs, disappearing dolphins, and disappearing eagles will disappear to the discount table, three for ten dollars."