Chronicles of a Radical Hag (with Recipes)

A bittersweet, seriously funny novel of a life, a small town, and a key to our troubled times traced through a newspaper columnists half-century of taking in, and taking on, the world The curmudgeon who wrote the column Ramblins by Walt in the Granite Creek Gazette dismissed his successor as puking on paper. But when Haze Evans first appeared in the small-town newspaper, she earned fans by writing a story about her bachelor uncle who brought a Queen of the Rodeo to Thanksgiving dinner. Now, fifty years later, when the beloved columnist suffers a massive stroke and falls into a coma, publisher Susan McGrath fills the void (temporarily, she hopes) with Hazes past columns, along with the occasional reprinted responses from readers. Most letters were favorable, although Haze did have her trolls; one Joseph Snell in particular dubbed her liberal ideas the chronicles of a radical hag. Never censoring herself, Haze chose to mollify her critics with homey recipesrecognizing, in her constantly practical approach to the world and her community, that buttery Almond Crescents will certainly melt away any misdirected anger. Framed by news stories of half a century and annotated with the towns chorus of voices, Hazes story unfolds, as do those of others touched by the Granite Creek Gazette, including Susan, struggling with her troubled marriage, and her teenage son Sam, whomuch to his surpriseenjoys his summer job reading the paper archives and discovers secrets that have been locked in the files for decades, along with sad and surprising truths about Hazes past. With her customary warmth and wit, Lorna Landvik summons a lifetime at once lost and recovered, a complicated past that speaks with knowing eloquence to a confused present. Her topical but timeless Chronicles of a Radical Hag reminds ussometimes with a subtle touch, sometimes with gobsmacking humorof the power of words and of silence, as well as the wonder of finding in each other what we never even knew we were missing.