Thirteen Albatrosses

A one-of-a-kind storyteller spins a wry tale set in Stay More, Arkansas, where a wise but eccentric political novice is running for governor, wreaking havoc, and looking, strangely enough, like a winner. For decades, Donald Harington has delighted readers with ribald, colorful adventures from Stay More, Arkansas, an imaginary Ozark enclave where shrewd and sexy hill folk mingle with reclusive millionaires rich from Wal-Mart stock, indigenous Indians, and legendary leftovers from the town's occasionally magical and completely mythical past. Now, with Thirteen Albatrosses, Harington returns to Stay More to document the uproarious attempt of native son Vernon Ingledew to earn the governorship of his great, if sometimes much-maligned, state. But, to his own shock, Ingledew-a handsome but less than telegenic ham magnate and self-educated polymath-is hampered by what his opponents refer to as his "Thirteen Albatrosses." Among them: he is an atheist; he never attended college; he lives in sin with his first cousin, Jelena; he displays a hysterically cryptic vocabulary. Not to mention the fact that he also supports "extirpating"-that is, getting rid of-hospitals, schools, prisons, tobacco, and handguns. Nevertheless, his candidacy quickly attracts the heaviest political hitters. This battle-tested band, known as Ingledew's Seven Samurai, are challenged not only by Vernon's extensive and dazzling liabilities, but also by kidnappings, the advent of adulterous liaisons within their own camp, and the unrelenting evil-doing of detested adversary Governor Shoat Bradfield, a model of corruption who purchased his high school equivalency certificate from a later-jailed school official.