Scribner Book Company</br></br>Product Description</br></br>The debut novel from award-winning author Lori Ostlundsmart resonant and imbued with beauty (<i>Publishers Weekly</i>) that provides considerable pleasure and emotional power (<i>The</i> <i>New York Times Book Review</i>)about a man who leaves his longtime partner in New Mexico for a tragicomic road trip deep into the mysteries of his own Midwestern childhood.<BR><BR>Sensitive bighearted and achingly self-conscious forty-year-old Aaron Englund long ago escaped the confinements of his Midwestern hometown but he still feels like an outcast. After twenty years under the Pygmalion-like care of his older partner Walter Aaron at last decides it is time to take control of his own fate. But soon after establishing himself in San Francisco Aaron sees that real freedom will not come until he has made peace with his memories of Mortonville Minnesota: a cramped town whose four hundred souls form a constellation of Aarons childhood heartbreaks and hopes.<BR> <BR>After Aarons father died in the town parade it was the larger-than life misfits of his childhood who helped Aaron find his place in a world hostile to difference. But Aaron??s sense of rejection runs deep: when Aaron was seventeen?? Dol