Publisher's Synopsis
Leawood Rat tells the inspiring--and sometimes hilarious--struggle against boredom in the affluent suburbs of America. A fast-moving collection of tightly intertwined journals written over a twenty-year period, Leawood Rat charts one man's journey through childhood in the 1980s, the promises and failures of state universities in the 1990s, the enchantment of Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism, the glorious wave of the tech boom followed by the post-boom cube Hell, and the welcome but wholly unexpected surprises of parenthood. Presented in reverse chronological order in three parts, Part 1, "Leawood Rat: Snapshot," is a retrospective portrait of finding happiness as a parent and low-level professional in a picturesque corner of suburban America. Part 2, "Leawood Rat: Dreams of a Happy Rat" confronts the blunt realization that childhood has forever passed and adulthood is mediocre at best. In a light-hearted admission of professional defeat, he invents The Happy Rat, a survival manual for knowledge workers trapped at the bottom of the corporate food chain. Part 3, "Leawood Rat: The Ring" is a novella of a frustrated young man who runs as far from suburbia as possible, traveling to Western and Eastern Europe to find happiness. On the verge of self-destruction, he finds a miracle.
