Diminutive fireball Teddy Gibbs takes leave from a career in LA to come to the family ranch in New Mexico to help her mother recover from an illness. But over flights by the nudist balloonists--the New Mexico chapter of COHAB (Clothiing Optional Hot Air Ballooning)--shatter the bucolic tranquility. Baby colts are injured, confrontations ensue. The road Teddy travels to undo the standoff and secure a future from the family ranch takes her through the landscape that is the 21st Century West--a place of changing land use patterns, behind-the-scenes chcanery at Indain gaming casinoes and politcal hi jinks that passes for governance in state legislatures. A cast of characters bound together by a mutual abiding reverence for the entertainment value of anarchy accompanies her: cowboys Song and Dance, the silver-tongued Northern Cheyenne, Roland Talks in Many Places and, through revealing historical research, a Billy the Kid as proponent of "the examined life." Hoppe has figured out how to tell the story of the marginalized communities of the rural heartland in literary lingo that resonates far beyond its point of origin. In "Don't Let All The Pretty Days Get By" he gives us a post-modern romp throught he New West.