The Bureaucrat

"You don't learn anything in politics until you quit." Thomas Dy is a statistician living comfortably in Seattle. He is a young man floating in total isolation. But in an impulsive gambit to find belonging and connection, Thomas steps out from behind his computer screen and throws himself into local politics. What follows is a journey into the post-pandemic American experience. Thomas forms unexpected friendships, sees strange sights, and builds an unlikely community from the ground up. But behind the noise of campaigns and elections, Thomas's real goal is quiet and personal: to go home and make peace with his parents. Written with granular social realism, The Bureaucrat puts a magnifying glass on local politics circa 2024. It's an intensely human literary novel about digital alienation, the search for meaning, and the strange story of modern American life.