A bi-coastal political eco-thriller, it is set in Washington D.C. and Los Angeles in the near present. Played out against the backdrop of a dysfunctional government and the lobbying power of Big Oil, two brothers, one a Washington political activist, the other a Los Angeles celebrity lawyer, fall under the spell of a charismatic eco-rock singer and activist who is organizing the biggest protest march in history. When that march careens out of control and into tragedy, the brothers must deal with a kidnapping, a daring rescue attempt, and an inspired act of brotherly heroism right out of the Dickensian precursor that this novel channels."The cities in William J. Palmer's new thriller Two Cities are Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., not London and Paris, and the conflict is not the French Revolution but a battle between the government and oil lobbyists and a powerful lobby called OceanSave that wants to prevent drilling in the Pacific." -Akron Beacon Journal, Lynne SherwinWilliam J. Palmer is Professor Emeritus of English at Purdue University. The Uses of Money is his eighth novel. The four novels in his "Mr. Dickens" series of Victorian murder mysteries have been chosen as selections by numerous national book clubs, and have been translated into Spanish and Japanese. The three novels of his The Wabash Trilogy include a sports novel, a crime novel and a comic novel, all set in the Wabash valley of Indiana in the late 20th-Century. Website: wjpalmernovelist.wordpress.com