Rare Days in Lost Valley

In a beautiful weekend in June a group of academics meet at Bellwether University in Lost Valley for an International Conference on Multicultural Initiatives. When an underemployed scholar of English literature and a computer programmer scheme to solidify their relations with the women they love they enmesh themselves in a tangle of plots that involve the personification of a famous scholar the theft of a cigar store Indian and an attempt to enter the school's mascot a pit bull in the local dogfights.<br><br>The characters include a Dean who began his career escorting young ladies at their comings out the Dean's unacknowledged English daughter an inarticulate Head of Communications who loves dogs and goldfish a President with high ambitions but confused intelligence a visiting Australian with a problematic accent a misty poet an uncertain feminist a gushing multiculturalist the Chinese innkeeper who reluctantly hosts the conference and a sinister professor of English whose multiple schemes are fittingly rewarded at the end.