News reporter Ray James, on the road to chronicle the brave new world of Donald Trump. battles his own addictions and delusions as he tries to get his stories straight. Meanwhile, evidence mounts that someone is trying to kill him. Author Michael Byrne picks up the trail of the wandering Beat spirit that Jack Kerouac dropped off somewhere near Big Sur before drinking himself to death, and delivers a literary intervention in The Return Trip. His cast includes a shadowy network of Chinese ex-pats and a modern-day Navajo shaman, among other characters. Byrne's first novel Is alternately funny and touching, bawdy and reverential, light-hearted and profound.