[This book] gets off to a promising start as a May-September couple on the Nebraska/Kansas border seek a handyman to deal with a clogged sink. "Plumbers do not come cheap," but the plumber lives (in what turns out to be nearly a ghost town) with a house-painter (who used to write) who works for three dollars an hour. Dahlberg, the painter, establishes himself with the young(er) wife, as the husband bemusedly watches their relationship develop and investigates the strange depopulation of Fork River (the not-quite abandoned town in which 700 people formerly lived, until a tornado or something swept a dozen and a large amount of dirt away, leaving a crater that is guarded by the plumber, the painter, and one other resident). --Stephen O. Murray at Amazon.com.