From Away: A Novel - Hardcover

David Carkeet was born and raised in the Gold Rush town of Sonora, California. He went to college at U.C. Davis and Berkeley, then to graduate school at U. of Wisconsin and Indiana U.--thus the southern Indiana setting for "Double Negative," his first novel. He lived in St. Louis for 30 years, where he set "The Full Catastrophe" and "The Error of Our Ways." He now lives near Montpelier, Vermont, and you can probably guess where he set his newest novel, "From Away." He is married with three grown daughters. More info at davidcarkeet.com.

If Alfred Hitchcock could remake Fargo, it might feel something like Carkeet's comic-absurd latest (after his memoir, Campus Sexpot). Denny Braintree, a writer for model train enthusiast mag The Fearless Modeler, is sidetracked when he wrecks his car while traveling home from an assignment in Vermont. Taken to a Montpelier hotel to spend the night before flying home to Chicago, he meets a drunken woman named Marge who promptly strips and slips into his Jacuzzi. After a quick condom run, Denny returns to find Marge missing. The next morning, two policemen show up at the airport looking for Denny, but they mistake him for a local named Homer Dumpling, who vanished from town three years ago. Denny, now the prime suspect in Marge's disappearance, returns to town as Homer and has a dodgy time fitting into his new role, but when Marge's body turns up and Homer becomes a suspect, Denny's new identity is no safer than his own. It's nutty and pushes the bounds of credulity, but the make or break is Denny: narcissistic, crude and in over his head, he's either charming or terminally annoying. (Mar.)
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