Lanterna Rally

Author: Alan Donnell

Publisher: FriesenPress

Published: 2023-11-14

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1039155308

The Pope walks out of the Vatican and into the rest of the world. He quickly becomes more famous than he ever was, and sightings of the Pope are reported across the globe including The Last Ranchman bar in Manyberries, a village in the lower righthand corner of Alberta. As the Pope sits alone, looking like a broken-down cowboy in a neon JESUS SAVES T-shirt and dunking fries in beer, the barroom regulars debate if he’s really the pontiff. With 97.3 percent of Manyberries’ population of 75 in agreement that the man in the bar is the Pope, the expected boost in tourism fails to materialize. Instead there is a series of strange events—infidelity, murder, spontaneous human combustion—until the pontiff is found on top of the town’s grain elevator with arms outstretched as if he’s gathering in the world. At the “end of Civilization itself,” as the locals call Manyberries, almost anything can—and does—happen. “Block” Broderick Crawford III tells this surreal tale of a handful of quirky residents whose lives are turned upside down—or right side up?—by the Pope’s presence. Block shares his own story alongside the town’s and its motley crew of characters and historic figures—from the inventor of the “sex box,” Wilhelm Reich, to Ordinarius Professor, Kaspar Heisenberg, father of the father of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. Although Block is heartbroken by his sometime girlfriend Genevieve La Guadeloupe—who is found lying on top of the Pope in a field during a summer snowstorm—and ponders the foibles of human existence, he continues to search for meaning in an increasingly irrational world. Absurdist yet hopeful, The Pope Moves to Manyberries is a spirited satire that will appeal to the guileless and jaded alike.