Hartsburg, Ohio, is a vintage rust-belt town on the wane; the factories and foundries are closed. And as the local cineplex gives way to yet another fundamentalist church, an ideological turf war has begun.

 

Oppressed by a dominant culture hostile to her values, born-again Christian mom Bevy Baer decides to run for a spot on the school board. Her plucky door-to-door campaign finds trouble when it runs into Wallace Cormier. A failed Hollywood screenwriter who has returned to his hometown to raise his daughter and churn out an uninspired newspaper column, Cormier fears that he’s gone soft. When Bevy knocks on his door, he decides to fight for his town and his beliefs. But has he jumped in over his head? Signs are posted, debates scheduled, sausage-making contests endured…and then big-time political advisers get involved. Soon Cormier and Bevy find themselves in a passionate, nationally televised, tooth-and-nail battle that leaves voters wondering which candidate, if either, is on the side of the angels. It’s red versus blue, Christian versus atheist, and the future of the country—or at least of one town and two families—seems to hang in the balance. Hartsburg, USA is at once absurd and utterly believable, a portrait of people on both sides of the American political divide, their stark differences and common humanity.

"Mizner (Political Animal) goes micro in his second novel, encapsulating sometimes awkwardly the current American political landscape in a dying Ohio steel town's school board election. Hartsburg used to be a bellwether community that voted correctly on every presidential candidate, but a conservative shift shattered the town's decades-long streak of infallibly picking the winner in 1992. Long frustrated with the 'thumpers,' local newspaper columnist and failed Hollywood screenwriter Wallace Cormier decides he has to do something after his beloved main street cinema is turned into a church. His plan? To run for the school board against Bevy Baer, a churchgoing mother of five who wants to push an agenda of creationism and zero tolerance. Both candidates get help from veteran political consultants, and things get ugly: rumors circulate about Wallace's mother's sexual activity, and a scandalous film surfaces that reveals a lot about Bevy that she's been trying to hide. While Mizner overuses generalizations and stereotypes about liberals and conservatives, the thin secondary characters are countered by an earnest depiction of the candidates' humanity and depth of conviction. The novel ends up being much more sad than funny, more straight that satirical, and it offers an apt examination of divides that aren't as cut and dried as red vs. blue." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

A former campaign worker and speechwriter, David Mizner is the author of a previous novel, Political Animal. He lives in New York City.