The subject of today’s blather: three exceedingly diverting works of fiction–and if that wasn’t rare enough, it so happens that all three take their settings in our central-most state: Nebraska, of course, the Cornhusker State.

I had been scheduled to teach at the Nebraska Summer Writers’ Conference this past June until a series of unfortunate events–none of them humorous or involving clever orphans, I’m afraid–scuttled the trip. This was a sincere disappointment for many reasons, not the least of which was my yankee soul’s intrinsic fascination with large open spaces unbroken either by rock walls or Dunkin Donuts franchises. (Little-known fact: there’s a one-to-one ratio of humans to Dunkin Donuts franchises in New England. Another little-known fact: everyone in New England is urinating, always.) Nebraska seems a little unreal to people like me. While I do feel that a great deal of the screaming about the coastal elites and their godless condescension to fly-over country has been overplayed, I cannot deny wondering, just for a moment, if it might be the place where General Othello did meet “[those] men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders.”

Only for a second, though! I swear!

Anyway, I was truly disappointed not to be able to go.

So I resolved to take my journey to Nebraska the old-fashioned way, like a gentleman, by reading a few books about the place.

My first selection was Timothy Schaffert’s novel, Devils in the Sugar Shop. It’s the story of a group of Omaha friends and a single winter’s eve of mayhem. Mayhem is the only word that can come close to summing up the marvelous showcase of weirdness that Schaffert puts on for our entertainment: a creepy prankster threatens our heroines with dirty collages; a husband’s salacious email to his mistress has been mis-addressed, to his daughter; Omaha’s swingers’ community (and if those three beautiful little words don’t get your attention, I don’t not know what will) is gathering for a bacchanal; a tattooed, dwarf, avant garde photographer (those five words?) named Tucker is casting a spell of allure over every woman he meets; and it’s snowing. As mad as the events are that swirl around them, the characters in Schaffert’s novel never lose their humanity. Their world may be a little more interesting, and a hell of lot more lively than our own, but we recognize these people, good and bad, and never just one or the other. (Addendum: I think goodreads is terrific, but the low rating there for this book is baffling. Take my word, Devils in the Sugar Shop is an exceptional novel.)

Sean Doolittle’s Rain Dogs takes its title from a song by the great folksinger Tom Waits, and shares his thundercloud-colored sensibility. Tom Coleman, a Nebraskan expatriate has come home to see to his inheritance–a campground and canoe outfit that’s seen better days–and his luggage is a broken heart and a monkey. Although the novel is marketed as a thriller, and there’s plenty of action as our hero finds himself tripping over a meth-cooking operation, the heart of the book is Tom’s drunken assault on his own memory. It’s all in the best hardboiled tradition, desperate and dangerous and dark, dark, dark.

Somewhere in the middle, north of Schaffert’s madcap, cosmopolitan Omaha, and south of Doolittle’s bleak Sandhills, lies Amy Knox Brown’s debut short story collection, Three Versions of the Truth. Brown’s Nebraskans aren’t going forward or backward; they’re being pulled off the tracks altogether, drawn by irresistible urges. In the collection’s best story, “Dr. Faustus in Lincoln,” a one-night-stand shadows Dan, a literature professor, even as he finds unlikely (and amusing) success as the author of self-help tome entitled, Who’s Your Demon? Abby, the protagonist of the excellent “Constellations,” is a housewife with a casual drinking problem, who discovers the obituary of her first love in the newspaper. Through the course of a day she considers a history of close calls–a speeding train, an out-of-control car–and blithely moves toward another one, in the company of her young boys. There’s a tart humor in many of these stories, as well as an understanding that everywhere–Nebraska and Fez and all points between–if you go wandering, the trouble you want will soon turn up.

And that’s Nebraska for you, a land of sorrow, misadventure, sexy dwarves, and some damn fine literature. But don’t take my word for it. Get thee to the library!

Cheers,
Owen