Mrs. Million

Barbaraannette Quinn loved her husband, Bobby, right up until the day he got in his truck,left their home in Cold Rock, Minnesota, and never returned. She has waited six years for him to walk back through her door, and now that she has hit the Powerball lottery, she's willing to give a million dollars to anyone who can make that happen.

Bobby and his girlfriend, Phlox, decide that she will turn him in, collect the million bucks, and then they'll both hightail it back to Arizona to live happily ever after. Unfortunately, everybody wants a piece of Bobby — including a pair of hulking good ole boys, who figure Bobby owes them, and a sociopathic pretty boy freshout of St. Cloud Correctional, who notices that Barbaraannette's offer doesn't require that Bobby arrive alive. Toss in a shy marathon-running banker, a lovestruck humanities professor, and Barbaraannette's kleptomaniac mother, and things start getting a little hot in Cold Rock.

"I've really started something, haven't I?" Barbaraannette says. What she has started is a crackpot criminal conspiracy in Pete Hautman's funniest novel yet.

Barbaraannette Quinn loved her husband, Bobby, right up until the day he got in his truck,left their home in Cold Rock, Minnesota, and never returned. She has waited six years for him to walk back through her door, and now that she has hit the Powerball lottery, she's willing to give a million dollars to anyone who can make that happen.

Bobby and his girlfriend, Phlox, decide that she will turn him in, collect the million bucks, and then they'll both hightail it back to Arizona to live happily ever after. Unfortunately, everybody wants a piece of Bobby -- including a pair of hulking good ole boys, who figure Bobby owes them, and a sociopathic pretty boy freshout of St. Cloud Correctional, who notices that Barbaraannette's offer doesn't require that Bobby arrive alive. Toss in a shy marathon-running banker, a lovestruck humanities professor, and Barbaraannette's kleptomaniac mother, and things start getting a little hot in Cold Rock.

"I've really started something, haven't I?" Barbaraannette says. What she has started is a crackpot criminal conspiracy in Pete Hautman's funniest novel yet.

Publishers Weekly

In a Minnesota peopled by Salem-smoking, cake-baking women and their disappointing, truant men, Hautman's faded rose Barbaraannette kills time and stakes her hopes on daily Powerball. The dumbest thing that Barbaraannette ever did was to marry her two-timing high school sweetheart Bobby Quinn--but the second dumbest is to offer up a hefty chunk of the $9-million lotto jackpot she's just won as a reward for his safe return. Missing for six years, having left only a broken-down Jeep and some abandoned fishing gear in his wake, Bobby Quinn has changed his name to Steele and is shacked up in Tucson with an untrustworthy ladyfriend named Phlox. When Barbaraannette's ship comes in, the couple see an opportunity for an easy swindle. They're not alone in this: friends of Bobby's whom he once gypped, professional crooks, extortionists and leeches of all kinds circle in on Barbaraannette's cash. And Barbaraannette 's protective sisters and senile mother will all butt in to protect her from herself. Hautman (Short Money) brings these eccentrics to life in a swift-paced, none-too-serious but colorful story with lots of entertainment potential. (Mar. )

Pete Hautman won the National Book Award for Godless. He is also the author of the teen novels Rash, Invisible, Sweetblood, Hole in the Sky, No Limit, and Mr. Was, which was nominated for an Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America. His books for adults include The Prop, Drawing Dead, The Mortal Nuts, and Doohickey. He lives in Minnesota and Wisconsin.