Population: 485 (paperback)

Welcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin, where the local vigilante is a farmer’s wife armed with a pistol and a bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives, and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts children and farmers. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, Population: 485 is a comic and sometimes heartbreaking true tale leavened with quieter meditations on an overlooked America.