The Dave Store Massacre
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The Dave Store is quite possibly the greatest retail
enterprise in American history. Selling everything from lawn
mowers to Pop Tarts to wine-cask-sized jars of dill pickles,
the Dave Store doesn't just dominate the retail market, it is
the retail market.
That is, until an employee at an outlet in
small-town Jackson, Missouri launches a wildcat strike. Then
company owner Dave Blandine, a retail legend known for
merciless cost-cutting and a glass eye the size of a doorknob,
decides to take a stand against organized labor.
He sends his half-witted son and heir, along with the
megalomaniacal head of a security company and nine heavilyarmed
agents to quell the unrest. They are met by Jackson's
sharp-as-a-blade lady mayor, and its laconic, marijuana-smoking
police chief who is famous for his two-gunned marksmanship.
Standing between these antagonists is the Dave Store's
local manager, a sycophantic nebbish with a penchant for
Byronic poetry, and his wife, a 15-year-old girl in a 25-year-old
woman's body.
As the strike deteriorates, both sides reach
for their guns. And the town moves inexorably toward mass
murder.
But cheer up. It's a comedy.
Loosely based on the story of the Matewan massacre--
the 1920 shoot-out between striking coal miners and armed
strike-breakers in small-town West Virginia--The Dave Store
Massacre is a satire in an American tradition that extends from
Mark Twain and Dorothy Parker to Christopher Buckley and
Paul Mooney.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Ebest (Private Histories) offers a slight debut novel that's part labor dispute, part smalltown comedy of manners, and part searing indictment of big retail, in the guise of the Dave Store, a Wal-Mart proxy that embodies "the most audacious idea in the history of American capital. It was... an attempt, not to corner the market on something, but to corner all markets on everything." The Dave Store comprises the retail ecosystem of Jackson, Mo., but when employee resentments flare into a strike, the conflict between underpaid workers and the odious son of founder Dave Blandine heads toward a violent confrontation, though the main events are often moved offstage so Ebest can examine the burgeoning love affair between mayor Mary and police chief Sid, and the hopeless personal and professional flailings of store manager/aspiring Byronic poet Lucas McCain Cantor. The characters, despite their confinement in increasingly cartoonish situations, are all too human, which is nice, but it also highlights the book's major flaw: it attempts deft, dark comedy, but only manages lumbering and obvious satire.
