Adam Schuitema

I doubted the back cover comparison with [b:Winesburg, Ohio|80176|Winesburg, Ohio|Sherwood Anderson|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1391639013s/80176.jpg|191520] at first, because Anderson's portrait of Ohio is beautifully structured, a series of portrait short stories in which other characters figure but avoid any moralistic overarching structure. Haymaker lived up to this praise, however. Each of his characters had a pleasing independence, and Schuitema did not follow any of them too closely. This resulted in a portrait of the community that felt complete, and a sense of the individuality of each character without the navel-gazing quality that more single-character driven stories can so easily fall into. It painted the northern landscape wonderfully (that first page was so thoroughly worth it) and filled in that background with an engaging plot, unexpected yet inevitable, full of the variation of a story that a whole community can tell.… (mere)