![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/pridemore-199x300.jpg\" "\\"pridemore\\"")
<\/a>Roe Tolliver has been the mayor of Pridemore, Missouri, for more than 40 years. He\u2019s getting old and tired, but he can\u2019t stop fighting for his beloved town. Ever since the main highway was rerouted to bypass Pridemore by eight miles rather than run right through town, things have gone downhill.<\/p>\nThe town and its businesses are slowly dying. Efforts to recruit new industries go nowhere. And then the mayor has a brilliant idea. What if Pridemore were the scene of a major news event, the kind that\u2019s all over network news for days, not to mention the cable channels? What if all eyes were focused on Pridemore? Wouldn\u2019t that put the little town back on the map? Wouldn\u2019t that make it known around the nation, maybe even the world? Wouldn\u2019t that liven things up?<\/p>\n
In this small town, there are a few people who get things done, usually with a lot of behind-the-scenes plotting and deal-making that certainly skirt any open-meetings laws, not to mention other legalities. Mayor Tolliver sets about persuading those key people to help him with his intricate scheme.<\/p>\n
The plan is to trap a likable, mentally challenged young man deep in a local cave, necessitating a massive effort that would last for several high-profile days before the eventual triumphant rescue. It would be better than the baby-down-the-well drama that had captured the national attention years earlier.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, at Pridemore\u2019s local newspaper, the Evening Headlight<\/em>, young Pete Schaefer longs for the big story that will rescue him from endless days of writing obits and covering boring meetings and inane features. This is not what he envisioned when he\u2019d gone to journalism school. He needs a break. It doesn\u2019t help that, in his boredom, he\u2019s fallen into a risky relationship with the publisher\u2019s teenage daughter. He could more usefully spend his empty hours working on the novel he started while still an undergrad. But that would require more energy than he seems to have these days.<\/p>\nSuch are the ingredients for \u201cA Plot for Pridemore,\u201d a first novel by Stephen Roth, who\u2019s done his time as a reporter covering small-town life and politics. And as you might expect, Roth deftly combines these ingredients into a story that\u2019s as rich in humor as it is in insight.<\/p>\n
Of course, nothing goes quite as planned. Digby Willers does get trapped in the cave, a media circus does ensue, and Pete Schaefer gets a big story, plus a lot more than he bargained for. But a lot goes wrong, some of it very wrong.<\/p>\n
Roth\u2019s tale is spiced with exaggeration and wacky characters, both in Pridemore and among the media horde that descends as the drama builds. But the novel is more dry humor than slapstick, in the fine tradition of Southern (yes, we’ll count rural Missouri as Southern) comic novels that includes such writers as Clyde Edgerton and James Wilcox.<\/p>\n
Blessed with a good reporter\u2019s skepticism, verging on cynicism, Roth obviously knows how old-boy networks and backroom deals work. Reporters who cover places like Pridemore are given to saying things like: \u201cI oughta write a novel, but nobody would believe this kind of thing. You can\u2019t make this sort of stuff up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Roth did write a novel, using his hard-won insights to make up some pretty outrageous \u201cstuff.\u201d The result is a story that\u2019s delightfully funny and surprisingly true.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reviewed by Linda C. Brinson Understandably, when newspaper reporters try writing fiction, they\u2019re likely to have a newspaper reporter as a major character. Stephen Roth, who spent 12 years in the trenches as a reporter for newspapers in Missouri and Florida, gives us a good one in Pete Schaefer, an aspiring novelist who\u2019s stuck in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[604,602,603,260,601],"class_list":["post-1471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-southern-fiction","tag-a-plot-for-pridemore","tag-comic-fiction","tag-missouri","tag-novels","tag-stephen-roth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1471"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1475,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1471\/revisions\/1475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/pridemore.jpg\" "\\"pridemore\\"")
<\/a>Roe Tolliver has been the mayor of Pridemore, Missouri, for more than 40 years. He\u2019s getting old and tired, but he can\u2019t stop fighting for his beloved town. Ever since the main highway was rerouted to bypass Pridemore by eight miles rather than run right through town, things have gone downhill.<\/p>\n