Granite Falls - Softcover

GRANITE FALLS is a work of fiction; a novel with a Capra-esque (Meet John Doe) quality. It is about "The Little [Town] That Could," which picks itself up, dusts itself off and reinvents itself after years of neglect as the American industrial age decimates. Tucked in the gently rolling hills of the Rust Belt where three states merge by the banks of the Ohio River, Thompsonville is a small county seat typical of so m any towns left behind by the loss of manufacturing jobs and American business. The downtown area has deteriorated to such an extent that there is virtually no business there, other than that of its county offices. This occurred over many years in direct correlation to the town's plants being shuttered, the closing of its mills and the relocation of companies attempting to capitalize on the lower cost of wages in other states and then overseas. An ensemble group navigates their lives from 1992, when several are graduating from high school, as they attend college, enter careers, marry, divorce, etcetera. After fifteen years apart, the group reconnects in their hometown, each for their own reason frustrated by the national economy, their inability to find jobs or keep their companies afloat. Recognizing that they cannot expect the government to solve their hometown's problems due to the general state of the American economy, the group determines to rebuild Thompsonville (and rename it Granite Falls) by combining their efforts and enlisting the help of the town's businesspeople. In order to accomplish their plan, it is necessary to either sell it to the current mayor or run against him in the next election coinciding with the presidential election of 2008.