Finding himself standing at the intersection of Nineteen Years Old and Hopelessly Stupid, Dennison McDowell decides higher education is just too much work and puts the books down in favor of a job as a letter carrier with the US Postal Service. After all, how hard can it be? Nothing more than a paid walk in the park, really. But when his "walk in the park" morphs into a world of conflict-conflict with dogs, demanding managers, and housewives wearing fierce curlers and showing all their teeth over missing sales flyers and damaged parcels that once held Uncle Albert's ashes-he decided to try his hand at management, a foray into a world of kaleidoscopic logic where corporate planning resembles a game of Hungry Hippos played by raging drunks. McDowell's often maddening career-long path as a letter carrier, Customer Complaints Officer, and finally as a union steward fighting both management and the employees he represents, leads him through a quagmire of battles with both four- and two-legged adversaries garnished with impenetrable resistance from an employer hell-bent on corporate suicide. Under the Squatting Eagle is the story of anyone who has watched The Dream die-or, as with McDowell, murdered it in cold blood by their own hand-and found themselves trapped in the blue collar world, where workers and dreams settle like the fallen leaves of autumn. But, as McDowell eventually learns, even the fruits of failure can sometimes taste sweet.