{"product_id":"the-first-paper-girl-in-red-oak-iowa-stories-isbn-9780385498968","title":"The First Paper Girl in Red Oak, Iowa: Stories","description":"With the stories in her first collection, Elizabeth Stuckey-French establishes herself as a smart new voice in American fiction and stakes her claim to a territory somewhere on the edge of stability, where normal is not just boring but nearly impossible, and where standing out in a crowd may just cause isolation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHer characters, mostly Midwesterners, are bizarre but endearing. A reform school graduate is placed in the care of her psychic aunt and in the servitude of a lucrative dog retrieval scheme. A mother who has accepted her son’s modest employment selling blue jeans bemoans the above-board lifestyle she discovers him leading as a wanted criminal. A rehab counselor lives vicariously through her already pregnant stepdaughter’s love affair with a drunk who spends his days in recovery and his nights in the bar.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFull of wry wit, tender sympathy, and heartland attitude, \u003cb\u003eThe First Paper Girl in Red Oak, Iowa\u003c\/b\u003e is as strange, funny, and poignant as the real world it resembles.","brand":"Penguin Random House","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46299949498597,"sku":"NP9780385498968","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780385498968.jpg?v=1767739352","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-first-paper-girl-in-red-oak-iowa-stories-isbn-9780385498968","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}