The Annie Year from Unnamed Press.

Introducing Tandy Caide, a big-boned, hard-nosed pragmatist and the only CPA in her small prairie town. Except for the home explosions caused by her town’s unfortunate methamphetamine problem, her life is a steady churn of Chamber of Commerce meetings, bean soup, crop rotations, barely tolerable high school musicals, and passive aggressive conflict avoidance. Until the new vocational agriculture teacher shows up—with his ponytail and his man clogs and his multicolored beaded belt. He’s all wrong for this town, and especially wrong for Tandy, who happens to be married. But, as Tandy notes, ‘Everyone gets to f*ck a fool at least once in their life.’

“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

“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.” —Publisher’s Weekly

Here’s some good stuff about the book:

From Minnesota Public Radio.

From the Star-Tribune.

From Kayla Rae Whitaker, in Split Lip Magazine.

A quick story on how I wrote the book:

Born and raised in a small town in rural Iowa, I am descended from German- and Norwegian-Americans who farmed and owned businesses. I was raised by a CPA, and the novel was written under this premise: What if my father had died before I graduated college and I took over his accounting practice? After reading Sherwood Anderson’s short story “Tandy” in Winesburg, Ohio, and Paul Gruchow’s essay “What We Teach Our Rural Children” (“If you were any good, you wouldn’t be here.”), Tandy Caide, CPA, was born.