The Suburbs of Heaven

What would drive easy-going, likable Jim Hutchins to pick up a twelve-gauge and head for his sworn enemy? The IRS threatening to garnish his mechanic's wages? His kids providing the police department full-time employment? His grief-sodden wife making money by dancing naked for his brother-in-law? Better ask what's kept him from picking it up before-His wits? His keen insights into human pretension? His wry sense of humor? His rough-hewn knowledge of the human heart? Tension rules until the end as "The Suburbs of Heaven balances heartbreak and black comedic hilarity." (Newsday.) "Biting, ribald ... engaging characters... What gives The Suburbs of Heaven much of its charm are the voices of its narrators, the five Hutchinses. Each of them is endowed with a similar blunt and idiosyncratic eloquence."-The New York Times Book Review. "At last New Hampshire has her Faulkner. This powerful and disturbing novel chronicles the hardscrabble lives of the Hutchins clan and their colorful, compelling neighbors. Here's a tale of betrayal and loss, ignorance and poverty. Merle Drown knows that what's important is the exploration of the human heart in conflict with itself."-John Dufresne, author of Love Warps the Mind a Little