Neoliberals, neocons, revolutionaries, folk musicians, an ambassador's New Age wife, river-damming landslides, and one entrepreneurial idealist all collide in the Andean paradise of Phillip Bannowsky's satirical romance, The Mother Earth Inn. Hal Rivers, Bannowsky's feckless hero, descends into the Republic of Esmeraldas just in time for the elections of Bill Clinton back home and an insane populist in Esmeraldas. Hoping to do good while doing well, Hal ends up on a quest that is both picaresque and exposé.

Phillip Bannowsky is an autoworker, activist, international educator, poet, and monologist living in Newark, Delaware. His works include Autoplant: A Poetic Monolgue (Broken Turtle Books, 2007), The Milk of Human Kindness (poetry, Dreamstreets Press, 1986), and Arabia and the American Dream: An Autoworker?s Lebanon Sojourn, (monologue, 2004).