When seventeen-year-old Randall Hunsacker arrives in the Great Plains town of Goodnight, Nebraska, pop. 1680, it is with the knowledge that here he has a second chance. Here he can escape violent events back home in Salt Lake City--a shooting, a car crash, a family shattered--and build a new life for himself. But starting from scratch proves to be far more problematic than he had hoped, and he soon realizes that the picture-perfect farm town into which he is, with some difficulty, absorbed conceals lives that are as complex, troubled, and lonely as lives are throughout the world. Goodnight, Nebraska describes Randall's ten-year progress, from disreputable friends and a too-early marriage to a renewed effort and, at last, a possibility for the sort of redemption he has long been seeking, and in the telling it becomes the story not just of one young man but of an entire community. In the great tradition of Sherwood Anderson's Winesurg, Ohio, this wonderful novel draws a distinctive portrait of a claustrophobic yet ultimately welcoming town without ever sentimentalizing or condescending. Goodnight, Nebraksa is a book to savor and to treasure.