Welcome to Eudora

In Thebo’s ambitious debut romance, Lottie Dougal, born and raised in Eudora, Kans., runs a stationery store in town and dispenses herbal remedies after hours. Newcomer James Emery is the town physician, and the townsfolk watch the pair’s immediate “courting behavior” in fascination. Meanwhile, the number of Mexican workers at the nearby troubled quarry keeps rising, but the population remains “invisible” to the white locals. By the novel’s halfway point, the idyll is shattered: James and Lottie’s romance is imperiled, and the quarry’s travails draw the town into an ugly confrontation whose focal points are Mexican-American banker Hector Rodriguez and us-against-them janitor Barney Lewis. Thebo is a skilled storyteller—her characters are carefully drawn, and their interactions sparkle—but the novel’s conventional romance runs on a different track than its social realist conflict. The two never fall fully into line, despite the liberal doses of humor Thebo injects throughout. (Sept.)