When Daniel Smith sets out on a crime-as-performance-art spree (known as the “Crime Artist” around town for blowing up cans of paint in bank vaults) fueled in part by the sudden death of his mother (who revisits him, spitefully, as a ghost), he never expects to be forcefully joined by two adherents to his youthful idealist cause: Zach, a sharply honest androgynous blonde, and Lucy, an insouciant voluptuous beauty. On the run from the police as well as from the aching doldrums of life in Lincoln, Nebraska, the three are determined to “change the world” by expanding on Daniel’s original series of art crimes. A folksy cast of characters brings together a surrealist romp of a book that toys with questions of art and life, humor and sex, beauty and the absurd. It’s a snowstorm, it’s a rainbow riot, it’s a blazing mad costume party. Read it, if you dare.