Author(s): Jim Dodge

Fiction

Not Fade Away is a rock 'n' roll road novel with rhythm to burn, traveling in time from the Beat era to the dawn of the sixties. George Gastin is a San Francisco tow-truck operator who wrecks cars as part of an insurance scam. One of the cars Gastin is hired to destroy is a snow-white 1959 Cadillac that was supposed to be a present for the Big Bopper, who died in a plane crash with Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. Instead, Gastin takes off in the car and heads for Texas where the Big Bopper was buried. Armed with a thousand hits of Benzedrine, Gastin navigates a road trip that will cover many miles and states of mind between the coffeehouses of San Francisco's North Beach and the open plains of the Midwest. Along the way Gastin picks up some extraordinary hitchhikers -- the self-proclaimed "world's greatest salesman", the Reverend Double-Gone Johnson, and a battered housewife with a box of old 45s. As the miles and sleepless hours roll by, Gastin's trip becomes a blur of fantasy and reality fueled by a soundtrack of classic rock 'n' roll.