Land of the Free

On the road for the better part of a decade, Woodrow Landfair pawned everything he owned in 2006, departing on a secondhand motorcycle to live, research, and write what would become LAND OF THE FREE (Harbinger, June 10). A modern American odyssey, LAND OF THE FREE is the autobiographical recollection of an affable and often-embellishing opportunist, who abandons his home and identity in search of a better life. Leaving on a used motorcycle, LAND OF THE FREE’s unnamed protagonist sleeps outside and sometimes in homeless shelters. Talking his way into strangers’ homes, he stays on their sofas, fibbing his way into odd jobs across the country. Regaling anyone within earshot with his own larger-than-life mythology, the road-worn laborer turned professional showman works his way up from a carnival work crew to the center stage spotlight – and finally to a national television debut. Then, trapped within the exaggerated public persona he invented, he attempts to flee the life he built, only to become a suspected con-man and the subject of a coast-to-coast fugitive chase. Along with a young runaway and a disillusioned war veteran, LAND OF THE FREE’s elusive hero attempts to discern his identity from years of fabrications, at first recalling, then re-engaging in, a forty-eight state search for the truth that might set him free.