This is the story of two communities, Shasta County, California and Sequim, Washington where, in the wake of Donald Trump’s election as President many residents became immersed in Q-Anon and anti-vax conspiracies. One area managed to gradually work its way back to a middle ground while the other has only become more deeply enmeshed in intolerance, bigotry and divisiveness.

The author calls the love of Donald Trump a “cult” and says he makes “rational governance seem almost a quaint throwback to a calmer, saner past. The author also makes the excellent point that small towns suffer when their newspapers vanish and are replaced with social media and rumor.

Sequim has a mayor who is a Q-Anon proponent and who fashions himself after Trump. Both Sequim and Shasta County see their communities become incredibly right wing with the advent of the COVID 19 virus. I won’t spoil anything by revealing what happens but there are some very interesting (and some very despicable) characters in both places. And both are likely representative of many small town and communities nationwide.

The book also covers other types of right wing battles in small towns, such as transgender advocacy, book bans and BLM protests. Trump’s legal woes and his threats against those who oppose him are also a part of the book, as are his repeated instances of Q-Anon coded messages.

It was interesting to follow these two areas for an extensive period to see what occurred. However, I did not feel that the towns where necessarily comparable….it seemed to me that there was a more liberal populace in one, and they had simply started ignoring local politics, allowing the crazies to take over, something that was quickly able to be fixed. Just my opinion, though. I enjoyed the book.