Simon Bussbaum’s a spiritual drifter looking for light in the days of Watergate. His burning bush appears in the form of City of Emeralds, a McCarthy-era, feminist-tinged reenactment of a triumphant New Mexico miners’ strike. Inspired, he flees Queens for the sulfur haze of a copper smelter, eager to join American workers’ march to the promised land of liberty and justice for all. But not every burning bush, it turns out, is a message from God. "[A] vivid debut... a tough-minded meditation on politics, delusion, and survival in Nixon’s America. A gritty, darkly funny coming-of-age steeped in radicalism and copper dust." \—California magazine