In this mesmerizing, funny, chilling novel, the setting is a small town in the 1940s Midwest, the subject the heart of a wounded and ferociously moralistic young woman, one of those implacable American moralists whose "goodness is a terrible disease". When she was still a child, Lucy Nelson had her alcoholic...
Maggie vowed to never marry a man who can’t laugh or dance, but when she and the dull new doctor in town, Everett Dulanis, wind up spending the night together in an abandoned dugout house, all that changes. Her father is the best man and his shotgun is the bridesmaid at the wedding where a union has been made, but there’s certainly no unity. Everett was engaged to Carolina Prescott, a southern lady in...