Passionate readers need not fear Philip Roth's lament that fiction is dead, since the writer's imagination is outstripped each night by the evening news. Gleason has conjured up a postnuclear holocaust Islamic horde that has conquered Europe and Asia and is pushing inexorably through the American West. Only a rawhide, tough, old woman, and her unlikely allies--George Patton, Stonewall Jackson, Amelia Earhart, and an adolescent triceratops--stand in the way of the triumph of utter barbarism. Equal parts fantasy, historical fiction, sf, western, and morality play, this novel is sprawling, epic, cinematic, and a ripping good adventure yarn.