Ralph Nader is back in the spotlight. Not for making a presidential run, or lobbying for groundbreaking safety laws this time, but for something new: penning a novel.

The public advocate and three-time U.S. presidential candidate has written more than 30 books. This month, at age 75, his first fictional work hits store shelves.

It's not much of a stretch from reality, however. In "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!" Nader lays out a quirky blueprint for remaking the United States, his home country, the way he sees fit. There's a higher minimum wage and universal public health care, for instance.

All it took to bring about those changes was US$15 billion, and a small but determined mega-rich group of protagonists, including Warren Buffet, George Soros, Ted Turner, Bill Cosby and Yoko Ono.

"This is not charity or philanthropy," Nader told CTV's Canada AM on Friday. "This is a head on collision by these 17 billionaires meeting in Maui, Hawaii every month to plan, to organize the grass roots and take on the big corporate goliaths and their entrenched political allies in Washington."

"Then you say okay, how do you surmount the power of the few over the many that's kept our countries down, from fulfilling the human possibilities of its people?"

The plot begins following the Hurricane Katrina disaster, with Buffet deciding to send aid supplies to New Orleans. He visits the wrecked neighbourhoods there, and resolves to fix what he sees as his dysfunctional country.

The group of wealthy, superhero-like characters establishes the Clean Elections Party, which eventually wins a significant chunk of the seats in Congress. To deal with conservative media pundits, they create a decoy political issue - a fake campaign to change the national anthem. And they set to work tackling financial problems and passing progressive laws such as universal health insurance.

As a veteran consumer-rights advocate, Nader is credited with helping to forge many such regulations in the U.S. during the 1960s and 1970s. They include seat-belt laws and the Freedom of Information Act. U.S. President Barack Obama has called Nader a "singular figure in American history."

In typical form, his new 733-page opus is as much a blueprint for left-wing community activists as an idiosyncratic parody of America's political landscape.

"Everything in that book could happen once you accept the predicate, of 17 determined people willing to spend the money," Nader said. "The whole transformation of our country in that book (cost) $15 billion."

"What this does, for all the citizen groups in Canada and the U.S. who try to improve their country and fight for justice, it says 'look, what if you really had the money and the brains and the media?'"

Nader reportedly sent copies of the novel to each of the mega-rich Americans who stars in it. There's no word as to whether he's heard any responses.