Published in 1990, three years after Garrison took a break from hosting "A Prairie Home Companion" and went to live in Denmark & New York, this collection is a love letter to fans, reassuring them that even though APHC was off the air, Garrison was still producing stories. This eclectic collection contains tales of love fumbled and recovered, satiric social comment, and letters on marriage and fatherhood.
At the time of publication, The Washington Post Book World wrote: “Garrison Keillor made it possible, after twenty years of black humor…to be both funny and nice, hip and winsome, scathing and loving, all in the flick of a single many-barbed quip."
And The Village Voice said: “Keillor’s literary style is as flexible and assured as his vocal delivery. It can slip from mood to mood so subtly and quickly you’re never quite sure where you are…. [His] writing has the silvery slip of running water, so graceful and easy it’s hard to believe it can carry so much that is jagged and unresolved. His integrity lies in his not smoothing away those rough edges in the swift current of his prose; they’re bruisingly, sometimes cuttingly there.”