A national holiday in Lake Wobegon is always gaudy and joyful. But what is going on between Clint Bunsen and Miss Liberty?

Clint Bunsen is one of the old reliables in Lake Wobegona the treasurer of the Lutheran church and the auto mechanic who starts your car on below-zero mornings. For six years he has run the Fourth of July parade, turning what was once a line of pickup trucks and girls pushing baby carriages that hold their cats into an event of dazzling spectacle. Blazing bands, marching units, cannons, horses, a fireworks show, and the famous Living Flagaone thousand men and women wearing red, white, or blue, standing in formationahave attracted the attention of CNN and prompted the governor to put in an appearance as well. The town is dizzy with anticipation. Until, that is, they hear of Clintas ambition to run for Congress. Theyare embarrassed for him. They know him too wellahis unfortunate episodes involving vodka sours, his rocky marriage. And then there is his friendship, or whatever it is, with the twenty-four-year-old girl who dresses up as the Statue of Liberty for the parade. Itas rumored that underneath those robes she is buck naked, and that her torch contains a quart of booze.

Itas Lake Wobegon as itas always beenagood loving people who drive each other crazy.

"Clint Bunsen of Keillor's Lake Wobegon is planning his sixth Fourth of July celebration, but by the time it rolls around he's been booted from the planning committee; his wife, Irene, is chillier than ever; and his 60-something hormones have him lusting after the much-younger Angelica Pflame, whose 'commando' performance as the Statue of Liberty in last year's parade is still a hot topic in the sleepy burg. In other words, everything's as you'd expect in a Keillor novel. There are quite a few subplots bubbling along quietly until everything erupts in a madcap denouement that combines elements of the Keystone Kops, I Love Lucy and Monty Python. Keillor's pacing and command of smalltown plot is impeccable; just at the moment when Clint's obsession with a genealogical discovery has become unbearable, the rug gets pulled out from under him. It's a Keillor novel that does what Keillor novels do: entertain and color nicely within the lines. (Sept.)" Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

It's a few weeks before Lake Wobegon's Fourth of July parade, and, as usual, 60-year-old Clint Bunsen, who's been chairman of the event for six years now, is running into trouble with the same old group of naysayers. Clint loves the parade; he has since he was 10. It may be that his passion for this pageant has turned into obsession; he may even have been getting too high-handed with his fellow committee... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) members. But Clint has a vision of glitter and joy and grandeur and adventure that he's driven to manifest through this annual event.

If he wants any joy and grandeur, that's the only way he's going to get it. As Clint sees his life, after a short stint in the Navy and an idyllic stretch of months in San Diego, he drove back home to Minnesota to tell his girlfriend, Irene, that he didn't want to marry her; he wanted to go to art school in California. Instead, Irene "trapped" him in the oldest, most traditional way, and Clint has spent the past 36 years married to a woman he thinks he's attached to only by biology and courtesy. He spends his days working as a mechanic at the family car dealership and has three children: two of them lackluster and unlovable; the third, his darling, Kira, he has managed to push out of Lake Wobegon. She lives in California, enjoying the life he always longed for. His wife puts up with him, merely. So it comes as no surprise that he sees the Fourth of July parade as his masterwork, his yearning bid for immortality.

Last year, he succeeded so well that he produced a parade that featured "not one but two national champion drum-and-bugle corps snap-bang-rattle-boombooming down Main Street, one of them in leather kilts, the Fabulous Frisbee Dogs of Fergus Falls, a unicycle basketball team whipping a ball around as they wheeled through fancy formations, a line of girls in illuminated glow-worm outfits, a dazzling float made of silver candy wrappers with a clown who juggled tabby cats, a fire-eater who blew flames fourteen feet long, local men and women dressed up as George and Martha, Abe Lincoln, Tom Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony ... and four antique circus bandwagons ... pulled by Percherons, sixteen-horse hitches that took your breath away."

Clint also accomplished a media miracle: He managed to get CNN to come to town, and footage of the parade went out all over the world. (Of course, the network neglected to mention the name of the town, but still ... ) Clint is justly proud of all that he has done, but now, this June, before the Fourth of July, two mean old biddies on the committee manage to oust him from his position as chair.

Clint is devastated, hurt beyond belief, but when one door closes, another opens, as New Agers say. Two things unexpectedly happen: He strikes up an acquaintanceship with the 30-ish hippie chick who played Miss Liberty in last year's parade, and he gets the result from a DNA test that says that — far from being a reticent Norwegian — he's more than half Hispanic. Clint and Miss Liberty manage a glorious one-day stand at a nearby motel (which everyone in town finds out about almost before he can get his pants back on). And the DNA test messes with his mind. If he's Hispanic, then he doesn't have to hang around this crummy town anymore, married to a woman he doesn't love; he can escape to California with Miss Liberty and strum songs of his own devising on the guitar.

A legitimate question arises here: Why has the publisher released this goofy little novel in September, rather than June, in time for the Fourth of July? Because, perhaps, this is actually a story about the coarseness, vulgarity and naivete of the U.S. presidential elections. Keillor's genius lies in the fact that after you finish reading this, you don't despair. He makes a strong case for the innate decency of the ocarina players, pig-manure vendors and even an odious governor and would-be member of Congress as they sweatily pursue their political ambitions. This is parody, of course, but — not for the first time — the bizarre reality of our actual politics outshines any parody that can be imagined. The trick, the Zen exercise, the Tao of the thing, is to look upon this every-four-year spasm with the same affection we would accord to the Uncle Sam on stilts in Clint Bunsen's beloved parade.

Reviewed by Carolyn See, who can be reached at www.carolynsee.com, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
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