Cash, a first-time novelist still in her twenties, is also trying something new. The book is set in an unnamed American suburb somewhere on the West Coast which is stripped of actually existing cultural, political, or historical markers. In their place, Cash has substituted a constellation of witty concepts that fall somewhere between a creative branding exercise and a Christopher Guest-like parody of small-town dysfunction. Some schoolgirls compete in Our Lady of Suffering’s Inner Beauty Pageant, while their more rebellious counterparts are shipped off to Saint Peter’s Nature and Wilderness Retreat for a bit of mandated reformation. Local stores include “a nineteenth-century-themed British pub called Olive or Twist” and a restaurant named Lucky Penne, and many townspeople are fond of a show called “Dad University,” in which a son and his estranged father are assigned as college roommates.journey-inline-newsletterinline-newsletter