'ER, or, The Brassbound Beauty, The Bearded Bicyclist, and the Gold-Colored Teenage Grandfather: A Novel

Who is 'ER? What is she? A medieval beauty whose likeness was carved on a brass burial plate back in the 14th century....

Switch to the 1960s. The lady is still snugly interred at the bottom of what is now an English garden attached to a rented house in the sleepy town of Poke-on-Thames. Along comes a schoolteacher/archaeology buff fresh out of St. Louis, Missouri, who exhumes her from a bed of dahlia corms. The discovery - a rare and valuable find - sets off a chain of events that shatters the town's perennial tranquility to its staid foundations.

Others are also caught up in this zany caper: a hustling American businessman; a slum-born pop singer on the wane; the rich, amorous queen of Poke-on-Thames' American colony; and a motley parade of juicy English locals. Everything explodes in a farcical, slapstick climax that leaves Poke-on-Thames reeling.

With funny-man Shepherd Mead calling the turns, it adds up to a hilariously good-natured spoof of all the English classes, including government bureaucrats, archaeology aficionados, expatriated Americans, and anything else in the line of fire. 'ER crackles with the same sense of free-wheeling fun that made Mead's earlier book, How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying a comic classic.

©1969 Edward Shepherd Mead Estate (P)2012 Edward Shepherd Mead Estate