Daum's winning first novel (after the 2000 essay collection My Misspent Youth) depicts the transformation of Lucinda Trout from a semisuccessful, 29-year-old New York City television morning-show reporter into a full-blown Midwesterner. She flees the big city (and her tiny apartment and domineering, illiterate boss) for wind-swept Prairie City, a smallish town full of affordable real estate somewhere in the flyover zone, promising to send back a series of TV segments dubbed "Quality of Life Reports," intended to demonstrate that wholesome, smalltown life still exists. But once she settles in, she finds all is not necessarily as expected in the heartland: the locals, though well-meaning, don't live up to the clich (nearly everyone has multiple children by multiple partners; a local lesbian singing duo calls itself Estrogen Therapy) and Lucinda manages to produce only a handful of dreadful dispatches. Instead of advancing her career, she surprises her cynical self by shacking up in a remote farmhouse with an irresponsible, faux-Sam Shepard type while helping to care for his three kids, and trying to make it through a long, cold winter with an inadequate car and little money. Though it sounds grim, Daum never lets it get maudlin, and Lucinda's determination to make everything work-the farm, the man, the kids, her career-makes for some brilliant flashes of comedy. By the end, Lucinda may not have found love, or necessarily a better life, but she does learn to relax a bit and take things as they come. Though the love story occupies center stage, this is not mere chick lit, and men will enjoy it, too. It is a confident first novel, full of wit and deft social criticism, often very funny and frequently wise. Daum is a rising star. (May 12) Forecast: The same publishing team that made Melissa Bank into a bestseller could do the same for Daum, who is a frequent NPR commentator and has already appeared on Oprah. A 12-city book tour and tie-in Web site should add to the growing attention. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Daum's essay collection My Misspent Youth (2001) established her as a thoughtful and terrifically gifted writer, and her first novel lives up to that promise. Lucinda Trout, 29, is vaguely discontented with her tiny, mouse-infested apartment in Manhattan and her job as assistant producer for a local morning television show. When her waspish, trend-obsessed boss sends her on assignment to Prairie City, USA, Lucinda thinks she's been handed the solution to all her problems: if she can get away from the pretensions and sky-high rents of New York, she can experience real life among real people (preferably in a spacious, yet cheap, apartment). The novel follows Lucinda to her new home in the Midwest, and what transpires is much more than a typical fish-out-of-water story. Real life turns out to be complicated, and Daum raises big questions in her bracing, funny novel. At once hilarious and wistful, it's such a pleasure to read that after you turn the last page, you want to start over from the beginning and read it again. --Meredith Parets

Lucinda Trout, associate producer of a local lifestyle television show, New York Up Early, visits Prairie City, a small Midwestern town, to film a program on methamphetamine use in America's heartland. She then gets her ditsy boss to agree to let her move there for a year and do a series on "real" life, as opposed to the reputed artificiality of life in Manhattan. In short order, she falls in love with Mason, a back-to-nature outdoorsman/painter, buys a house with him, and joins the board of the Prairie City Coalition for Women and a book club. Meanwhile, Mason becomes addicted to methamphetamine but intends to give it up, so Lucinda decides to stay with him forever in Prairie City. This misguided first novel by the author of the well-regarded My Misspent Youth: Essays lacks anything to recommend it: the one-dimensional characters border on stereotypes, situations are introduced in one chapter and then dropped, and the promising plot fails to deliver. The love story is nonsensical, since we have no clue what draws Mason to Lucinda or vice versa. Daum alternates between what seems to want to be social commentary (but what's her point?) and satire (but there's no humor, unless you consider a horse ejaculating on a group of party goers funny). An optional purchase for collections where her other book is in demand. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 1/03.]-Nancy Pearl, Washington Ctr. for the Book, Seattle (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.