American Midwest

Two damaged thirtysomethings with mysterious back stories return to their Wisconsin home town to lick their wounds and subsequently run into each other at a local gallery open. Flash back to their experience as two high school oddballs assigned to do a science project together. Uh huh, you can predict the ending to this one: awkwardness leads to happily ever after. But not so fast. This suspenseful story has twists and turns that you won’t expect and you won’t really know which narrator to trust, and which version of the past to believe, until the very end.

This book is about the effect a morbidly obese obsessive-compulsive eater has on her family.  It's true that matriarch Edie's non-stop consumption weighs heavily on her family, but so does her impending divorce from husband of 30-something years, Richard.  We get everyone's point of view. Pharmacist Richard who just wants to have sex again before he dies.

This debut novel is a little bit gritty, a little bit gothic.  Set in mid-century, rural Ohio and West Virginia, Pollock's landscapes are as bleak as his characters' lives.  Pollock introduces us to a cast of orphans, preachers and murderers whose lives all seem to intersect.  This is a page turner of the darker sort.  Check Our Catalog