Incident at SIMMs Center

Schultz's second novel, self-published like his first (Gully Town), details escalating tensions between freedom-loving citizens and an oppressive federal government in a small Kansas town located at the exact geographic center of the U.S. After surviving a near-fatal ambush in Vietnam, childhood pals Jim Simms and Bobby Cottrell return to their hometown of Simms Center to find vulture-like bankers waiting to repossess family lands from the drought-plagued wheat farmers. At the same time, local Professor Elliott stirs the ire of Washington with speeches damning the federal government. When, in reprisal, the ``inner circle at the White House'' sends in the IRS to close down the town's only medical clinic, which is owned by another agitator, two federal officers are beaten, the town is blockaded and the professor becomes an uneasy bedfellow of the real-life white supremacist group, the Posse Comitatus. Included in the action are a mysterious Indian chief, assorted love interests and a veritable army of local, state and federal cops. Schultz pulls out all the stops (and then some) to generate sympathy for the little man and woman, even bringing in the CIA to recreate Bobby's jungle trauma in order to drive him crazy. Readers may wish that the author had realized that in fiction, as perhaps with government, less can be best. (Dec.)