MISSION TO AMERICA by Walter Kirn

Reviewed by George Quraishi

Mason LaVerle sets out from an isolated Montana commune seeking to replenish the gene pool of his dwindling, inbred religious sect, the Aboriginal Fulfilled Apostles. What he finds is that the only people willing, or even likely, to come back with him could use some pretty serious help themselves. In Walter Kirn’s book everyone is in need of being saved. Besides the Apostles tucked away in Bluff, there are teenage Wiccans, new-age environmentalists, trust-fund ranchers, a harried writer, a failed actress, even a herd of buffalo; all seem perfect candidates for a little earthly salvation as prescribed in the pages of the Apostles’ newsletter, Luminaria (except the buffalo, who of course can’t read).

Then there’s Mason’s partner, Elder Stark, whose venture into America finds him lacking in moral and dietary fiber. It’s Mason’s pairing with Stark that allows a novel stuffed with the low-brow schlock Americans digest these days—served up both through television sets and drive-thru windows—to read so fresh. The Apostles have lived for over a century with a healthy diet, matriarchal leadership and an aversion to the free market. Kirn flings his characters onto the American highway with minimal introduction, beyond rumor, to life outside of Bluff. Their attempts at humor and at dressing fashionably—to say nothing of attracting mates—forces the pair to come up against life, real life, with all the expectations and cynicism of toddlers.

As Elder Stark falls prey to buckets of fried chicken and reality t.v., Mason is left to comb the Colorado ski town in which they’ve landed for someone receptive to his message, all the while fearing that the way of life he extols is being eviscerated by the very man funding the mission (with his winnings from a reality t.v. show, it so happens). Stark, angling for a big donation, becomes the landowning Effinghams’ gopher; Mason falls in love with a woman and is asked to destroy, rather than save, a buffalo; the tenets that hold together Bluff, if Mason can believe the piecemeal reports, are crumbling. What starts as a simple story about good and less good becomes a not-so-simple one along the same lines: everyone stil