Boom Town: A Lake Wobegon Novel by Garrison Keillor

With Boom Town, Garrison Keillor returns to his hometown of Lake Wobegon, which is in the midst of a rising economic tide driven by millennial entrepreneurs. “I go back home mainly for funerals, which these days are for people my age, 79, which gets my attention, an obituary with my number in it,” he writes, as he sits at the bedside of Arlene Bunsen dying with humor and grace, and recalls a teenage love affair with Marlys Gunderson and observes the millennial culture, a stark contrast to the Lutheran farm town of the radio monologues. He spends the summer in the old Gunderson lake cabin, reliving the past, postponing his return to New York and his wife Giselle. Garrison Keillor wrote Boom Town during the pandemic lockdown in New York, reading drafts of it to his wife, Jenny, sitting across the room. He did parts of the book in monologues for audiences in Boston, New York, Washington, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Virginia, along with the story of how, in the 8th grade, his shop teach