Cover painting by Christina Shurts: www.tinashurts.com

A musical online novel (and sometime free stage show) with original songs performed by members of We Five, Uninvited Dinner Guests, and Stanley Wycoff's band, Alt. Country tracks the legend of Harvey Kooper, a country rocker in a last-chance marriage. Haunted by a lifetime's mistakes, he runs from near-fame, leads spiritual fasts in the San Fernando Valley ("Country Music's Salinger," a bartender calls him), finds Jesus, marries a radio host who spins musical dreams of half-remembered pasts . . . and then recreates all the tragedy he had tried to break free of. Meanwhile he is shadowed by a faded Rolling Stone reporter who believes that the artist's slide to obscurity is a story for our times. HEAR THE SONGS or VIEW THE SHOW

Alt. Country is yours to enjoy for free, but if the story has been of value to you, you can support it in lieu of a book purchase by clicking here (cookies must be enabled):

The Los Angeles Times Book Review called Rifkin's first short-story collection "[H]auntingly beautiful, the work of a gifted storyteller with a sharp eye but a tender heart." Kirkus Reviews wrote, "Stories and a novella suggest that Rifkin is what might have happened had Nathanael West lived on and been even more talented . . . . Exquisite." Time Out (New York) wrote: "Rifkin writes with such startling originality and authority that you have to believe he'll be the next darling of the literary world."


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