Pontoon » (Reprint)

First with his performances on Minnesota Public Radio's Prairie Home Companion and later in his books, Garrison Keillor has become a symbol of the small-town Midwest -- its absurdities, its stoutness, and its warmth. His popular, funny stories set in Lake Wobegon manage to evoke nostalgia for a town that never existed.

In the little town of Lake Wobegon, a &#8220;wedding&#8221; is planned down to the last detail, from the cheese and p&acirc;t&eacute; to the flying Elvis to the pontoon boat. Meanwhile, the surprising secret life of a recently deceased good Lutheran lady comes to light, her daughter meets a lover at the Romeo Motel, and a delegation of renegade Lutheran pastors from Denmark comes to town. That&#8217;s just the beginning of the stories and characters that drift in on <i>Pontoon</i>. It&#8217;s Lake Wobegon as you&#8217;ve imagined it: a tightly knit community that sometimes draws you home and sometimes gives you wings to fly away.

The Washington Post - Howard Frank Mosher

Pontoon, Garrison Keillor's first Lake Wobegon novel in six years, abounds with good-humored satire, lyrical evocations of Keillor's beloved Midwestern community and characters as believable as your next-door neighbors…In these parlous latter days, contemporary fiction isn't, heaven forbid, supposed to be entertaining and funny. I hope I'm not tolling the death knell for Pontoon by admitting that I don't recall laughing out loud over a novel so frequently since the last time I read A Confederacy of Dunces. For my money, that's a tribute to Keillor's highly skilled storytelling…