Leon Arden
Twilight's Last Gleaming
“Once upon an air-polluted evening in Brooklyn Heights an attractive blonde was sitting alone in her small apartment reading a fashion magazine when a strange voice ordered her to confront the Dauphin, borrow his army, and go forth to drive the English out of France.” So begins this hilarious novel in which Lorrie begins to hear voices induced by marijuana, not heaven, voices mostly from past great US patriots that urge her to “save America.”
She attempts to do this with the help of Justin Warm flash, a young history professor who becomes her lover, an army colonel who would like to become her lover, an angry woman’s lib member, an even angrier Black Panther, and a lovely, uninhibited American Indian. Lorrie organizes a pocket army (equipped with bayonets and gas masks), burns down the local draft board and is about to attack the local factory responsible for polluting the air, when really strange things begin to happen.
Beneath the hilarious surface of this engaging novel is the deadly serious question of just how far we should go to protest against an elected but blundering government, however much we love our country.
A REVIEW OR TWO
“This wildly funny and very immediate novel . . . he is established as a real artist among new young novelists . . . Arden has his own marvellous way with words. They are at once down to earth and as evocative as poetry. His book races along and you race with it . . . It’s a book the young should like. Swift moving, funny and in its way, a very beautiful and modern love story.”
-Virginia Brasier The Sun-Telegram, San Bernardino
“Arden succeeds in the rarest feat – producing a book that’s tremendously funny, yet very deeply meaningful and touching at the same time. The novel says things about America that can only be said anymore from this sort of tragic-comic viewpoint. This is a good one.”
-Star-Telegram, Forth Worth
“Leon Arden gives the reader a high-octane dose of wacky black humor . . . All told – quiet an hallucination!”
-Despatch, Columbus, Ohio
“This novel is a free-wheeling jumble of wit and sardonic comment on society.”
-Miles A. Smith, AP Newspapers
“The Twilight’s Last Gleaming is (1) a comic novel and-or (2) a sharp jab to the gut of America. Assuming the author Leon Arden is as concerned about the present state of this fast-becoming-less-than-great nation as are some of this fictional characters, it’s intended to be both. What’s more it scores on both counts . . . aside from the many laughs to be had upon reading Arden’s book. There always is present the underlying conviction that there is something horribly wrong with a people who can deplore violence in the streets while applauding the President’s escalation of the war abroad. Yes, Arden is concerned – and it shows.”
-Wes Wietsma, Press, Grand Rapids, Mich.
“Surprisingly funny and original . . . dialogue that’s strictly prime time . . . with everything popping on cue.”
-Kirkus Reviews