Guns and Butter

During the height of the U.S.-Soviet arms race, Bill Ashford and Alan Feldberg are two social workers staffing a homeless shelter in the slums of Washington, D.C. Faced with relentless budget cuts, they concoct a wild scheme: create a phony defense corporation and con the Pentagon out of enough money to keep their shelter open. Guns and Butter follows the comic high jinks that ensue as the elaborate plan snowballs out of control, sweeping senators, generals, stock brokers, and military industrialists into its path. But the novel does more than that-it also provides a glimpse into the shattered lives of the shelter's suffering but resilient residents. With its constantly shifting viewpoint and style, Guns and Butter treads the line between humor and horror in the vein of such classic novels as Catch-22 and Slaughterhouse-Five. Alternately comic and tragic, absurd and heart-breakingly real, it is a bold literary experiment that challenges our national priorities as it tackles one of the most important political and moral issues of our time. It is one of the most unusual novels you will ever read.