Summary

Dean Price:

“They’d grown dependent on the corporations and lost their independent spirit,” Dean Price thinks as he watches the endless stream of trucks and cars on Route 220, where he’s constructed several truck stop convenience stores. “They were supposed to be Americans, not Americants, but democracy was in one of those stages of decline.”

Once a Republican, Dean becomes an environmentalist as he watches fevered construction of shopping malls, fast food restaurants, chain drugstores and more gas stations. He’s come to believe that “all the country’s problems had started with the Republicans.” Dean invests in starting a biodiesel truck stop with two others, but he neglects his other businesses.

Because all of his enterprises are under one corporation—Red Birch—when some of them begin to fail the biodiesel operation feels the pinch and he is unable...