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Small Town Odds

By Jason Headley

5-1/2 x 8 in; 344 pp ;
Paperback
Published in April, 2006
ISBN 0811853667
ISBN13 9780811853668

$12.95  

Small Town Odds -- "With winning wit and compassionate, delightful prose" (Publishers Weekly), Jason Headley tells the story of a young man trapped in a small West Virginia town. Enormously likable and a habitual screw-up, Eric Mercer has settled into a sometimes raucous, underachieving life in his one-stoplight hometown—a life cobbled together from his part-time activities as bartender at the American Legion, assistant mortician, and father to his beloved 5-year-old daughter, Tess. Tess seems to be the main reason smart, talented, twenty-four-year-old Eric is staying in town, though her mom, a centerfold-quality beauty, would have it otherwise. When Jill, the lost love of his life, returns to Pinely in the same week that the town goes nuts in preparation for the high school football team's Big Game, life unexpectedly shifts into high gear, and Eric must blunder his way toward enlightenment—fast. Authentic and refreshingly unpredictable, Small Town Odds is written with an acute sense of place and character reminiscent of Richard Russo.

Jason Headley grew up in West Virginia and moved to San Francisco in 2000, where he played in a rock band and worked as an advertising copywriter. This is his first novel.