The Annie Year: A Novel

by Stephanie Wilbur Ash

Overview

Tall, trusted Tandy Caide, CPA, is a long-time patron of the arts in her town, which is why you will find her sitting in the front row of the high school’s annual musical production. This year is an Annie year—and it would be no different than other years were it not for the high school’s hiring of a new vocational agriculture (Vo-Ag) teacher. With his beguiling ponytail and decorative beaded belt, Kenny catches Tandy’s eye immediately. Ignoring the fact of her slovenly husband—who takes most of his meals in their hot tub—Tandy decides to entertain Kenny’s advances.

Trusted community pillar that she is, Tandy’s affair has instant repercussions. People are talking and her husband’s subsequent breakdown and check-in to a mental institution doesn’t help. At her regular meeting with the Order of the Pessimists—comprised of her deceased father’s disgruntled and drunken best friends—she is asked to step down as treasurer. Not only that, but her old lover is keeping a secret somehow connected to the Vo-Ag teacher. And meth labs—fueled by the abundance of fertilizer present in the region—keep blowing up. Somehow, it is all connected to Tandy’s ex-bestfriend’s daughter—the star of this year’s Annie. As Tandy pieces together the puzzle that has become her life, it becomes clear she must embark on a journey of self-discovery that might even include leaving town for good.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781939419965
Publisher:	The Unnamed Press
Publication date:	10/11/2016
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	246
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Stephanie Wilbur Ash is a former editor at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine. She lives in Minneapolis and Mankato, MN, and is originally from rural Iowa. This is her first novel.

Editorial Reviews

08/15/2016
A lonely accountant waffles between pessimism and hope in this quirky debut. Now in her early 40s, Tandy Caide has spent virtually her whole life in the same rural Iowa town, with the exception of a brief stint at college in comparatively cosmopolitan Dubuque. She is the town’s only CPA, a responsibility she takes very seriously, and she seeks out sophistication where she can find it, by attending the high school’s drama productions and enjoying a fine cup of coffee at the local diner. But when the exotic new vocational agriculture teacher expresses an interest in her, Tandy is sorely tempted to risk not only her loveless marriage but even her professional reputation for an opportunity to escape to a different life. Occasionally lapsing into a second-person narration, Tandy’s voice is intriguingly and deceptively complex, leading readers to glimpse the longing beneath her professional veneer. Simultaneously a character study and an exploration about the personal costs of living in a dwindling farming town increasingly marred by meth abuse, Tandy’s story finally offers bittersweet, hard-won hope. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

"Stephanie Wilbur Ash's new novel The Annie Year is a fierce hymn to small Midwestern towns, and the women who live there." —Euan Kerr, Minnesota Public Radio

"This is a keeper, a fresh and quirky 'Main Street' for the Midwest... Stephanie Ash writes with a wry smile and an obvious adoration of Iowa small-town life. Its faux-preachy tone keeps us — snooty types from the big cities along the river — at arm's length while Ash's character embraces her imperfect corner of the world. It's a bold first novel by Ash." —The Star Tribune

"Ash’s debut novel brilliantly captures the slanted quirkiness of a Midwest full of small-business owners and exploding home-methamphetamine labs... Darkly hilarious and weirdly beguiling." —Kirkus Reviews

"A lonely accountant waffles between pessimism and hope in this quirky debut... Tandy’s voice is intriguingly and deceptively complex, leading readers to glimpse the longing beneath her professional veneer." —Publishers Weekly

"Stephanie Ash's The Annie Year is an incredible debut— hilarious and insightful and energetic. Ash sassily mines the dark humor of Midwestern life with utter confidence and creates buoyant and indelible characters who will stick in your heart and mind forever and ever." —John Jodzio, Author of Knockout

"The people in this town will try to tell you that... So The Annie Year begins with its small-town Greek chorus. Meanwhile, Tandy Caide, sardonic CPA and pathological people-pleaser, enters the year of her reckoning, the year she starts making her own moral ledger. Like the mythological Annie— you know, the one who sings 'It’s a Hard Knock Life' but also 'Tomorrow'— Tandy has spunky charm and believable innocence. I read this mordantly funny book in one sitting, it's a fine novel with a main character you’ll miss once you’ve finished." —Debra Monroe, author of My Unsentimental Education

"Stephanie Ash's completely original comic novel is a caustic, gimlet-eyed, cry from the heart for small town America and a very funny look at big desires in a small place." —Mark Haskell Smith, author of Raw: A Love Story

From the Publisher

2016-08-03
Tandy Caide, a dedicated CPA in small-town America, can handle the complexities of everyone’s tax returns. But can she handle an affair with the new vocational agriculture teacher?Ash’s debut novel brilliantly captures the slanted quirkiness of a Midwest full of small-business owners and exploding home-methamphetamine labs. For the last 25 years, Tandy has striven to live a life of integrity, always conscious of her role in the economic stability of the town. She has quarterly lunches with the Order of the Pessimists, a sodality helmed by her late father’s grumpy friends Doc and Huff, who lovingly criticize her like a daughter. Partly that’s because Huff practically disowned his own daughter, Barb, when she ran off just before high school graduation and came back pregnant. As a waitress, she’s raised Hope alone. She did pretty well until the night of this year's high school musical, Annie, when a rather inebriated Hope played a rather violent Ms. Hannigan. No longer welcome in the regular high school, Hope joins the Vo-Ag class. The night of the musical was also the night Tandy met the Vo-Ag teacher, occasionally known by his given name of Kenny Tischer. Soon Tandy and the strange Vo-Ag teacher, who wears not only a ponytail, but also wool man clogs, have embarked on a passionate romance. Meanwhile, Tandy’s obese husband, Gerald, checks himself into a mental health facility, and Hope seems to have picked up a shady job with a shady farmhand. With staccato phrasing and acerbic observations about the mundane foolishness of everyone’s lives, Ash keenly captures Tandy’s dry wit. Tandy doesn’t simply work as a CPA; she possesses an accountant’s soul, as hilariously evinced by her tallying the costs and benefits of waving to her clients and chaperoning the Vo-Ag students.Darkly hilarious and weirdly beguiling.

Kirkus Review