First Make Mad is a day's journey into the soul of Roman Moran. A father and a fisherman, a writer and a grocery store clerk, a sinner and a mystic, Roman makes his way through a single Ash Wednesday in the curious town of Hot Springs, Arkansas. There the ghosts of gangsters and Native Americans whisper on the mist-wreathed mountainsides, and the dead of Roman's own family form a chorus such as Odysseus might have heard as he coursed over the Mediterranean...