An unforgettable novel of an American suburb devastated by a fiendish
madman--the most ambitious and important work yet by "the 21st century
answer to William Burroughs" (Publishers Weekly).
Blake Butler's fiction has dazzled readers with its dystopian
dreamscapes and swaggering command of language. Now, in his most topical
and visceral novel yet, he ushers us into the consciousness of two men
in the shadow of a bloodbath: Gretch Gravey, a cryptic psychopath with a
small army of burnout followers, and E. N. Flood, the troubled police
detective tasked with unpacking and understanding his mind.
A mingled simulacrum of Charles Manson, David Koresh, and Thomas
Harris's Buffalo Bill, Gravey is a sinister yet alluring God figure who
enlists young metal head followers to kidnap neighboring women and bring
them to his house--where he murders them and buries their bodies in a
basement crypt. Through parallel narratives, Three Hundred Million
lures readers into the cloven mind of Gravey--and Darrel, his sinister
alter ego--even as Flood's secret journal chronicles his own descent
into his own, eerily similar psychosis.
A portrait of American violence that conjures the shadows of Ariel
Castro, David Koresh, and Adam Lanza, Three Hundred Million is a
brutal and mesmerizing masterwork, a portrait of contemporary America
that is difficult to turn away from, or to forget.
