Parisian Pigeon

If you've been to Paris, you know that pigeons are everywhere and universally despised. They crowd the streets and are filthy, rude, and slovenly nuisances-much like Americans. It is 2006, and Joe, a young American historian, arrives in France to research the Reign of Terror, but is fixated on the War on Terror. The world trembles in discord, and Joe's foundation is disturbed. Parisian Pigeon brings the reader into a young man's consciousness, where spirituality wrestles with the pleasure principle. Wandering the streets of Paris, fumbling the language, his head divided against itself, he finds sanctuary in a bottle. The need to be with people and away from himself compels him to frequent an Irish pub. There he meets other young people who, stuck in dead-end jobs, distract themselves with drugs and alcohol. Along with Joe, they endure their dreams' autumn, a spiritless fall and last desperate attempt to be extra-ordinary. Witness the Parisian Pigeon's unraveling and the macabre denouement of his struggle to discover in himself what he cannot find in the world.