Jepsen Hosea Drinkwater carries burdens everywhere he goes, one of them a full-sized cross, absurdly hearkening to the Biblical command: ‘Pick up your cross daily and follow me.’

A writer of questionable merit, Jep authors a column in the Redford Beagle in outer-suburbia Minneapolis, telling cat-in-tree stories and sharing Rice Krispy marshmallow treat recipes. Shy, yet innocently outspoken, he is seen as ‘unique’ to most everyone, insufferable to a powerful few.

In the utilitarian Land of Lakes, donuts, and pancakes, wherein he lives and loves – and suffers – Jep dwells in higher ideals, and despite his faults, temptations, his very humanness, aims to sow seeds of unity in a conflicted world, one friend at a time. While, in contrast to the town’s darker underbelly, Jep serves as an oracle of Goodness and Truth – for he can’t help himself – enduring scathing rebuke, and curiously inciting a conspiracy on two fronts, aiming to silence the do-gooder.

What befalls this common man, who follows a most uncommon and moral path? Where might we find that rightful path, in a faulty world? Reading his periodic column, as they transform into insightful philosophies, an accidental gospel perhaps, leads one to believe a mediator, and perhaps divinity itself, might yet be found, not in the esteemed and posturing powerful but in the one most ordinary and decent among us. A man like no other, maybe the last good man, he only wants to change the world, as he invites us all, “Call me Jep, since we’ve got to be friends by now.”