The Town Crazy

July 27, 2020
Singer-songwriter Roche (Wayward Saints) probes the secrets of a small American town in this immersive character-driven tale. In 1961, the usually serene Hanzloo, Pa., and its Catholic residents are unsettled after Lil O’Brien, a frustrated poet and the mother of seven-year-old Alice, develops what her husband, Jim, describes as a “disease of the soul.” The townspeople consider Lil crazy—she speaks in jumbled sentences, can’t keep herself or the house clean, and doesn’t look after Alice. No one knows Lil is suffering an emotional collapse over a decision she’d kept to herself. Then, Luke Spoon, a handsome artist, moves to town with his young son, Felix. When Felix and his classmate Alice are discovered after hours in the darkened cafeteria, huddled under a table, town do-gooder Clarisse McCarthy jumps to the conclusion that Felix exposed himself to the girl—an accusation that leads to a tragedy. Roche’s characters are memorable, if not unique. Clarisse’s two-faced gossiping and resentment of those who “hadn’t fallen under her spell” have been done many times before, and so has Lil’s bored housewife character (“Don’t get married,” she tells Alice). Still, Roche’s deep understanding of them will keep readers engaged all the way to the end. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman

August 1, 2020
The one-eyed nun asks high-schooler Felix Spoon to prove himself trustworthy by holding on to a rock she says is from God's cave. He is as good as his word, carefully nestling it in his pocket, until one day he decides to secretly show it to Alice O'Brien. Alice always seems sad, and something appears to be seriously wrong with her mother, who stays shut in the house all day. Felix's father, an artist from New York City who arrived in the small town of Hanzloo, Pennsylvania, with the boy but not his mother, intrigues the town's women, particularly self-appointed do-gooder Clarisse McCarthy, a Marilyn Monroe look-alike determined to prove she's more than curves. And when Felix and Alice are spotted in the school cafeteria and refuse to say what they're up to, it doesn't take long for the wagging tongues of the town to unleash a tragic chain of events. As all of the residents' lives come together on a collision course, Roche lays bare the outsized impact petty rivalries can have in a small community so tightly knit it creates a stranglehold. Roche is the founding member of the singing group the Roches.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)