Rare Days in Lost Valley: The Bellwether University Book of Universal Truths

In a beautiful weekend in June, a group of academics meet at Bellwether University in Lost Valley for an International Conference on Multicultural Initiatives. When an underemployed scholar of English literature and a computer programmer scheme to solidify their relations with the women they love, they enmesh themselves in a tangle of plots that involve the personification of a famous scholar, the theft of a cigar store Indian, and an attempt to enter the school's mascot, a pit bull, in the local dogfights.

The characters include a Dean who began his career escorting young ladies at their comings out, the Dean's unacknowledged English daughter, an inarticulate Head of Communications who loves dogs and goldfish, a President with high ambitions but confused intelligence, a visiting Australian with a problematic accent, a misty poet, an uncertain feminist, a gushing multiculturalist, the Chinese innkeeper who reluctantly hosts the conference, and a sinister professor of English whose multiple schemes are fittingly rewarded at the end.