Welcome to Higby - by Mark Dunn (Paperback)

About the Book

The acclaimed author of "Ella Minnow Pea" brings the same charm and love of good language to this Robert Altman-esque comedy about the hilarious goings-on in a small town in northern Mississippi over Labor Day weekend.

Book Synopsis

Following the national success of Ella Minnow Pea, this second novel from Mark Dunn brings the same charm and love of good language to a small town in the South. A Robert Altmanesque comedy, Welcome to Higby follows the hilarious goings-on in a small town in northern Mississippi over Labor Day weekend. From mousy Carmen Valentine, whose guardian angel, Arnetta, gives her penny-pinching shopping tips, to addled old Hank Grammar, who preaches Jesus to his neighbors' pets, Higby's townsfolk have a knack for getting into -- and trouble getting out of -- outrageous situations. Blessed with an unerring eye for dead-on details, Dunn lovingly traces the eccentric and touching lives of his characters, offering an intelligent yet heartwarming vision of life in small-town America. Welcome to Higby is a Southern comical tale about simple dreams both realized and thwarted by all the complexities of the human heart.

Review Quotes

USA Today [H]umor and human sentiment quickly hook the reader into taking up residence. A three-day weekend in Higby isn't long enough.

Colleen Kelly Warren St. Louis Post-Dispatch Every single one of [Dunn's] characters are just so darn likable, and the author's view of humanity so essentially generous, that the reader is gradually sucked into Higby....Welcome to Higby is good-hearted fun.

Leif Enger author of Peace Like a River Mark Dunn is a wry eyewitness along the lines of James Wilcox or Larry McMurtry; Welcome to Higby is as farcical as Modern Baptists, as winning as Texasville. Impish and forgiving, here is a writer who observes the commandment: Thou shalt love thy characters. And they pay him back in buckets.

Pat MacEnulty, Sun-Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, FL) Dunn's careful imbedding of humor has an organic quality that turns the book into a real page-turner, not so much to find out what happens but to see what surprising gem you'll find on the next page.

Paula Friedman The Miami Herald Dunn uses human peculiarity in the service of creating empathy, conjuring an atmosphere of wise affection in the process. The small town of Higby, with its accidents, fortuitous encounters, and zany coincidences, offers life at its most ordinary and its most extraordinary.

About the Author

Mark Dunn is the author of Ella Minnow Pea, a winner of the Borders Original Voices Award, a finalist for the Book Sense Book of the Year, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers title. He has written twenty-five plays and is currently the playwright-in-residence with the New Jersey Repertory Company and Community Theatre League in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. Originally from Memphis, he now resides with his wife in Greenwich Village.