Claw of the Otter--Silent Glory Beneath the Eddies of America

Latigo Flint once wrote an unflinching novel about vengeance and redemption and uncommon bravery in the face of relentless evil. The title: Claw of the Otter--Silent Glory Beneath the Eddies of America.

The book opens with a prologue introducing the hero, an otter pup named Destiny Sparkleheart, who, along with his seven happy siblings, enjoys the tranquility of a perfect life on the shore of a gentle river, under the loving care of his young mother, Apple Blossom Sparkleheart.

The pace and intensity picks up a bit in Chapter One, when the villain, a voodoo-practicing mime and playwright named Vaspith Keel, shows up, snares Destiny's mother and screaming siblings, and then dips them into a vat of highly corrosive acid while Destiny watches, wounded and trembling from the murky tangle of partially submerged mangrove roots.

Vaspith Keel has the hideous plan to produce, direct and star in a trilogy of Broadway plays featuring himself, and the painted, skeletal remains of nearly a thousand otters. Over the course of the next 600 pages, time passes and a bunch of stuff happens--some of it beautiful, some of it horrific, all of it absolutely gripping. And people tend to burst into applause when they finish the final page. (Which actually happens to be quite rare you know.)

Needless to say, this book is a very powerful and moving book. In fact, it's said that compared to Claw of the Otter--Silent Glory Beneath the Eddies of America, Watership Down reads more like Hop on Pop. People wept so hard that the publisher had to switch to a special type of waterproof paper and ink for the second printing.

Ordinarily I would never divulge the end of my book, it would be tantamount to artistic and financial suicide... but the thing is, I showed up a little drunk to a meeting with the publisher, and ended up signing away all my rights for two cases of lite beer and a Steinbeck bobble-head doll. So since the bastards have it all while I recycle cans, I don't feel the slightest bit bad telling you that the climax roars in the shadowy menace of a deserted theater stage at night as Destiny Sparkleheart and Vaspith Keel stalk each other through a dangling forest of otter skeletons--finally clashing center stage and fighting to a mutual death.

Which may seem depressing, what with the hero, Destiny Sparkleheart dying and all, until you realize that in a hand-to-paw fight between a human and an otter, mutual death is actually a great and mighty victory for the otter.

Oh yeah, and then just as Destiny is bleeding out and burbling final breaths, his son, Destiny Sparkleheart Jr., who everyone thought had been swept down a storm drain and eaten by alligators eight chapters ago, bursts through a stained glass window and races to his father's side just in time for a nuzzling of noses and "I love yous" and then Destiny Sparkleheart Jr. eats Vaspith Keel's heart and snarls triumph and redemption across a dark velvet sea of theater seats, upon which lean the backs of man.



(And in a remarkable literary innovation--if you rub the last blank page of the book with a lemon wedge, a hidden epilogue appears, which summarizes Destiny Jr.'s long and happy life as the beloved pet and guard-otter of Hollywood Golden Couple, Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Phillippe.)