The Kowboys of Kiev

Sometimes Truth Really Is Stranger Than Fiction. Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, Rhett Avery joined the Peace Corps, seeking travel and the opportunity to help people. Instead of engaging in humanitarian outreach, though, his business experience lands him as an advisor to an eclectic group of mercenaries and misfits based out of Kiev, Ukraine. These were adventure seekers, men and women who cared about nothing but profit, trying to escape their past. Rhett befriends Vladimir, a former Soviet intelligence officer who, suspicious that the American may be working for the C.I.A., maneuvers him into hosting a radio show called The Kowboy in Kiev. Despite Rhett's initial skepticism, he becomes a huge hit with the locals, and becomes a familiar sight in the streets of Kiev in his signature cowboy hat, boots, and duster.Enter Crazy Dick Siegler, a braggadocious American hustler who has dreamed up the scheme of a lifetime-springboard off the success of Rhett's radio show by opening up a cowboy bar... in the middle of Kiev.The chaos and cross-purposes involved in the founding of the Kowboy Dance Hall & Saloon involves Chechen gangsters, American investors, spoiled teenage country singers, a former mob enforcer, the police, and the deputy mayor of Kiev. And when that toxic mix results in beatings, extortion, assassination attempts, and the brutal execution of members of a rival gang, the plan spirals out of control. Rhett tries to hold the whole thing together, despite Crazy Dick's extravagance, poor sense of judgment, and addition to booze, but it may not be enough to rescue the first cowboy saloon in the Ukraine.