First citizen

The decision to default on the country's massive national debt, followed by a rogue nuclear attack on Washington, DC, and abetted by the forces of factionalism, splits the United States into a clutch of warring regions led by strong men with private armies. Granville James Corbin—"Granny" to his friends and enemies—uses the U.S. breakup to build a personal fortune in the new markets for environmental cleanup, state funding lotteries, and electric power pools. He undertakes an adventurous war in Mexico and, when a political rival decides to outlaw him, returns to the States to settle an old score. Corbin eventually defeats the strongest army on the continent and reunites the nation in the role of First Citizen. The story is told from Corbin's own first-person chronicles, with commentary by his bodyguard and henchman, the renegade Billy Birdsong.