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The Dead Man's King

John C. Wolfe

Fifty-nine homeless men are living in Central Park in a hidden city with its own boundaries, laws and governance. The "Misfits" of Misfit City live in comfortable, discreet "abodes" inconspicuously carved into the terrain. Misfit City (which occupies twenty of Central Park's 840 acres) is morally-quarantined from the corrosive influences of power, greed and plutocracy. That seems to change one day when a drifter wanders into Misfit City and dies of a heroin overdose. He is brought back to life by paramedics - a miracle that inspires Granger, the one Misfit who witnessed it, to go searching for life's deeper meaning on, of all places, the streets of Manhattan's Upper East Side. He writes philosophical panhandling signs -- and quickly learns that, the more arrogant and self-centered his signs are, the more money he earns. The Park Avenue crowd nurtures his thinking. As time goes on, Granger changes from a mild-mannered people-pleaser to a menace. He gets mouthy and defiant with his Mentor, Virgil, and even picks a fight with a local politician Every day for months, he brings a little bit of what he's learned on the streets of Manhattan back to Misfit City. After fifteen years of relative harmony in Misfit City, there's a mysterious rash of infighting, quarreling and suspicious deaths. One shocking development leads to another and, eventually, to Misfit City's breaking point.

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ABOUT JOHN C. WOLFE


John C. Wolfe is the former Chief Speechwriter to former New York Governor George E. Pataki. He has worked as an advertising copywriter, a magazine editor and the Senior Writer for the Monroe County Executive in Rochester. He was Pataki's Chief Speechwriter for nearly ten years. He spent the remaining two years of Pataki's tenure as Senior Writer to the SUNY Chancellor in Albany. In 2007, he retreated to the Adirondacks and worked as a Zoning Officer in Chestertown, New York. His writing was limited to a series of published op-eds in several newspapers, including the New York Times, the Baltimore Sun and the Times of Israel. He began writing about his battle with alcoholism in 2014.