Today we’re honored to give readers a selection from Samuel Finlay’s novel Breakfast With The Dirt Cult… the only thing worse than counter-culture shock is counter-culture shock after a war. Sink your teeth into Walter Reed and the Countess of Montreal in Exile.

Walton sat at the window of the shuttle bus and watched the Washington Monument pass by under a midnight sky. The world was speckled with lights and activity and he regretted that the first sight of his country had to be one of modernity. The neon, and the concrete, and the billboards; there was something about it all that seemed foreign and garish.