October Light

"Stubborn, cranky, and conservative, 72-year-old James Page has reached the breaking point with his obstinate, sober, and progressive older sister, Sally Abbot. So, he takes a twelve-gauge shotgun to her color television and chases her up to her room, where she finds herself locked in with only a trashy novel to read, and only apples to eat. John Gardner uses the escalation of their colossal feud as a crucible in which he stirs pop culture, New England ethics, myths about the American Revolution, political extremes, and family tragedy - and from which he extracts his own hilarious, gothic portrait of a rural Vermont community. The labels "liberal" and "conservative" are peeled back to reveal the more complex and contradictory facets of human nature."--BOOK JACKET.