Description
While the menfolk carve Mount Rushmore above, Pêche Appleton sells her own tiny sculptures to the Depression-era onlookers below. Some find them offensive, particularly Taft-Stuck-in-a-Bathtub, the Cancan-Dancing-Presidents, and the whole Jefferson-and-the-Slave-Girl series. Pêche is married to Ernie, star shortstop for the town team, and NO HAPPIER STATE is their story of love, small town scandal and national political outrage. Their love is at first sight when they're twelve. The scandal revolves around the baby. The outrage involves their Steinke, a German-born Jew, sent to an internment camp because the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and Bad Glove Hand, a Lakota Sioux, heads for Hollywood only to be blacklisted as a Communist—but not before implicating actor Ronald Reagan in the same plot. Despite their own personal burdens—and the Depression and a World War—love and friendship prevail in NO HAPPIER STATE (Americana #2).