Overland

Overland is a novel set in Burbank, California in 1942 against the true story of how the US government ordered an entire fake town to be built on top of the vast Lockheed Aircraft plant as a way to camouflage it from Japanese aerial reconnaissance. The story looks at the correlation between techniques used in US Army industrial camouflage and 1940s Hollywood set design. The book also explores subjects pertinent to the period, such as Japanese-American civilian internment camps and the role of women working in munitions factories. The parallel themes of heaven and hell are reflected in the book’s unique layout and design. Printed horizontally, the two narratives (Over and Under) unravel simultaneously above and below the gutter between facing pages, with characters and their stories migrating between the bright utopian world of Overland and the dark underworld of industry and war. This unexpected format challenges our expectations of how a book should be read.