Lian McAndrews and the Perfect Human World

Lian McAndrew served in the Peace Corps in Brazil, taught school in rural Nebraska, and was a ranch cowboy before he became benignly obsessed with the certainty that if enough people did four things they could individually and collectively create a perfect human world. In a fit of fervor in Fresno, he also had the word "LOVE" tattooed on his forehead. He wears what he laughingly calls a dress. And when we meet him, for the past seven years Lian, now 37, has held "visits" to assorted Midwestern towns and cities, speaking for three weeks and gathering followers.

Other than that, he's an everyday tall, lean, funny guy and a super speaker. As the book opens, his team of nine volunteers, directed by Lian's long-time helper Ralph Ford, assemble in Allerton, Iowa in April to begin a three-week mission.

The book covers that 21-day period (the chapters are the days and dates). Some of it is the normal fare for such a visit: finding a public site to meet and speak, letting the locals know that he is there and why, coordinating the education of the volunteers with the five public addresses Lian makes, staying on the right side of the law, mollifying the church leaders who are certain he is Devil-sent (and a threat to their flocks and collections), and trying to find a justifiable (and hopefully invisible) position when dealing with the fringe few who want him to lay on hands and cure their ills (while getting them to public health to be repaired or cured).

But a series of unusual things occur in Allerton that neither he nor Ralph could foresee. The local newspaper is sure he's a fraud so they send their "hero-piercer" Reginald Lincoln to expose the movement. One of his volunteers has an arrest record (confides Allen Ross, the Police Chief) and seems to be setting up the richest benefactress in town, just as calls come in threatening Lian that his followers should stop bilking the merchants. One of the other volunteers simply disappears. A former woman acquaintance of Lian's claims she is pregnant. The librarian suspects that Ralph Ford sells dope. And a new face appears at a public session offering Lian $2,000,000 to underwrite his program and help him set up a Perfect Human World Academy.

Something else as unexpected happens: Cupid shoots a double arrow. Lian is flat-out in love with Marie Bennett, a volunteer and every bit his match on the basketball court and in life, and Ralph has fallen as hard for Brittany Lasker, an earlier volunteer who speaks in detail about her rags-to-riches experience in helping create a program to turn agro waste into boxes, bags, and nets. She is joined in her talk by Bill Hogan, a 47-year-old school coach, who is the heart of a full-town life-direction program that brings the audience to their feet!

Running through the entire book is the idea that any person, any reader can help lift this earth to a higher realm by simply doing the four things. They needn't take a vow, quit their job, forsake meat, leave their church, or alter their everyday activities. They simply need to refocus, then actively participate in earth-improving actions. That's the heart of Lian's activities and talks and why the volunteers are devoting three weeks and probably $1,000 for their own expenses to help others understand the philosophy and to each sponsor another volunteer for a future visit. If this sounds mundane, utopian, dull, or pie-in-the-sky, then you must read these pages to see why a handful of curious Iowa folk at the start swells to fill the auditorium at the end, and why Lian and Ralph are about to accept the huge donation to expand their scope from the Midwest to the world.

Who doesn't want a better world? Lian says we must want more: a world approaching human perfection for your grandchildren and a world almost there for their grandchildren. He paints the vision and the process, but he's a very human guy in the painting, one whom your readers will admire and like very much. The ulterior motive behind this book? Lian's forehead says it all. From LOVE can come a perfect human world. This book tells how, in a fun, realistic setting with very real people.

Gordon Burgett, paperback, 244 pages long, published 10/2003.