In the original dustsheet. Green cloth spine with gilt title. Cream boards.

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Having read some of Garrison Keillor’s other stuff because of this one, this is still by far my favourite. These are such humane and affectionate stories about the sort of people we really are, no pretensions, but honesty and empathy. Plenty of laughs because it could happen to someone you know! A proper feelgood book. One you will want to lend to anyone who’s your friend – be prepared not to get it back though. . .

Review: This is an amusing book, with plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. It helps to have heard Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon series on radio as his deadpan drawl is very much a feature of his narrative. More a book to dip into than to read at a sitting as it is a series of short stories with no plot development: slices of life in a fictional midwest town. Not for those who like to get to grips with an unfolding story, but delightfully entertaining nevertheless.

Garrison Keillor wrote Boom Town during the pandemic lockdown in New York, reading drafts of it to his wife, Jenny, sitting across the room. He did parts of the book in monologues for audiences in Boston, New York, Washington, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Virginia, along with the story of how, in the eighth grade, his shop teacher Orville Buehler, worried about the boy’s carelessness with the power saw, sent him up to LaVona Person’s speech class, thus changing his life. Keillor says, “For many people, the key to success is discipline and education, but for me, it was ineptitude with power tools.” His twice-weekly columns appear on Substack.