The Bicycle Man

For Sandy Rivers, the known world is the suburban landscape of his morning paper route, an intimate if unsteady place where the illusions of comfort, sanctuary and myth are shattered by daily headlines that chronicle a country torn by Vietnam, Civil Rights and the struggle for national purpose.

It’s the spring of 1968. Belief in American providence is clashing with the limits of American might. During the next sixteen months, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis, B...