All will be revealed!

Who on earth would want to take a thirty-year-old traveling disaster with the words "The Book Stops Here" painted across the back? Israel and Ted are determined to find out. But their search is leading them on a very twisty trail through the countryside in pursuit of a suspicious convoy of New Age travelers. And the hunt is raising numerous troubling questions—such as where exactly is Israel's high-flying girlfriend, Gloria? And is Ted really making a move on Israel's widowed mother?

The Impartial Recorder takes its name from the tirelessly gossip-oriented local paper that reports on nothing in particular and on everything that's too interesting to have made a more dignified newspaper of record. The story kicks off with the return of a prodigal son, Davey Quinn, who is struggling to hide the fact that he hasn't done quite as well in the big city as friends and family have been led to believe. But that's only the beginning. The Impartial Recorder goes on to celebrate the heroic energies and comic failures of plumbers and ministers of religion, sandwich entrepreneurs and housewives, short-order cooks and owners of lingerie shops. In the tradition of Garrison Keillor and Roddy Doyle, Ian Sansom has given us a brilliant and hopeful comedy; in his words, a "book of profound inconsequence, as beautiful and moving as, say, the sight of an elderly couple standing outside a greengrocer's, trying to choose a cauliflower."