Serendipity Green
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Descripción editorial
Tuttwyler, Ohio, is the perfect Midwestern town. Beautiful square. Gazebo dripping with gingerbread. Leafy streets lined with big white houses.
Even the town’s annual summer festival is perfect. It commemorates the unfortunate clubbing death of the Indian princess Podewedka, by the town’s founding fathers, John and Amos Tuttwyler, back in 1803.
The only thing that’s not perfect is Howie Dornick’s house. It’s right on the parade route and it hasn’t been painted in years. But that’s going to change, now that D. William Aitchbone is chairman of the Squaw Days Committee. You can bet on that!
But Bill Aitchbone has to tread carefully. Howie, after all, is the illegitimate son of local war hero Artie Brown. Howie finally does paint his house. But not white like all the others. He paints it the most obnoxious shade of green imaginable. Howie’s really in hot water now.
Then Hugh Harbinger sees Howie’s green house. Hugh was once New York City’s most famous color designer. Before going off the deep end, he created 300 different shades of black! He’s determined to make a comeback. Determined to make “Serendipity Green” the most popular color ever.
Serendipity Green not only lampoons America’s small town festivals, it lowers the boom on big city trendiness as well. It is irreverent and iconoclastic and simply irresistible.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A smarmy overachiever's machinations power this sly sendup of smalltown politics and society shenanigans. D. William Aitchbone has schemed, he's planned, he's out-machiavellied Machiavelli, but he has not yet managed to get himself elected mayor of Tuttwyler, Ohio. Even more vexing, he cannot convince Howie Dornick--Aitchbone's half-brother-in-law, city maintenance engineer and town black sheep--to paint the eyesore of a home Howie inherited from his mother. Bill wants "Squaw Days," Tuttwyler's upcoming festival, to be the best in town history so he can ride to the mayor's seat on a groundswell of popularity. If Howie will just paint his house, if the vice-president of the U.S. will agree to ride in the parade and if Bill can keep the other town councilors under his thumb, all will be well--particularly if he makes the money he expects when he sells his late uncle's farm to developers. Things seem to be going according to plan when Howie finally does agree to paint his house, but the strange green color he uses horrifies the town nearly as much as it delights Hugh Harbinger, a depressed New York "renowned genius of color" with a talent for marketing and development. Then a strange grave is uncovered on Aitchbone's developable property, and Howie and his honey, librarian Katherine Hardihood, see their way clear to make Aitchbone's life a living hell. Though moments of overly broad humor and a number of stock characters keep this clever follow-up to Levandoski's well-received first novel (Going to Chicago) from soaring, sound plotting and zippy pacing lead to a satisfying conclusion.
