The Annie Year. Stephanie Wilbur Ash

      

      Booksellers love The Annie Year!

      “Set against a backdrop of Iowa farm life and a burgeoning meth industry, The Annie Year bring to life a warm and wonderful cast of curmudgeonly characters and proves that friendship can save your life. Stephanie Ash makes a huge splash with this debut novel. The Annie Year needs to be on everyone’s 2016 reading list.”

       —Pamela Klinger-Horn, Excelsior Bay Books

      “The Annie Year is addicting and swiftly pulls you in to Tandy’s need for disruption in her small town life. Tandy makes many questionable decisions, and Stephanie Ash shows that they are often a necessary part of being alive. Funny and full of keen observations, I loved reading The Annie Year much the same way I love reading Judy Blume, James Cain, Tom Drury, and John Irving, other writers with the gift of being able to get us inside a character’s motivation. Ash has created a flawed character, not without judgment, yet we stick with her and root for her, as we should for ourselves.”

       —Steve Salardino, Skylight Books

      “Stephanie Ash has the voice. Ash’s story is to the Midwest like what Larry McMurtry does with Texas and Carolyn Chute with rural Maine.”

       —David Unowsky, Subtext Books

      The Unnamed Press

      P.O. Box 411272

      Los Angeles, CA 90041

      Published in North America by The Unnamed Press.

      1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

      Copyright © 2016 by Stephanie Wilbur Ash

      978-1-944700-25-6 (ebook ISBN)

      Library of Congress Control Number: 2016952137

      This book is distributed by Publishers Group West

      Cover design & typeset by Jaya Nicely

      This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are wholly fictional or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Permissions inquiries may be directed to [email protected].

       For Randy and Karen and all the kids of Fayette County

       In the absence of specific rules, standards, or guidance, or in the face of conflicting opinions, a member should test decisions and deeds by asking: “Am I doing what a person of integrity would do?”

       —American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Code of Professional Conduct, Section 54, Article III: Integrity

      Out of her defeats has been born a new quality in woman. I have a name for it. I call it Tandy.

       —Sherwood Anderson, “Tandy,” from Winesburg, Ohio

      Contents

I. A Certified Public Account

Chapter 1

II. The Vo-Ag Teacher

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

      III. The Sod House

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Chapter 24

       Chapter 25

       Chapter 26

       Chapter 27

       Chapter 28

      IV. Dubuque

       Chapter 29

       Chapter 30

       Chapter 31

       Chapter 32

      V. This is Business

       Chapter 33

       Chapter 34

       Chapter 35

       Chapter 36

       Chapter 37

       Chapter 38

       Chapter 39

      VI. Faith

       Chapter 40

       Chapter 41

       Chapter 42

       Chapter 43

      Acknowledgments

      About the Author

       I.

       A CERTIFIED PUBLIC ACCOUNT

       1

      The people in this town will try to tell you that the whole mess that was last year started with the new vocational agriculture teacher, but they would be wrong. I was there so I know the truth. In fact, through my own mistakes and failures, the number of which I readily admit to you is plentiful, I caused much of it to happen. Obviously I am in a better position to recount the events than a busybody pastor or a senile doctor or an out-of-work rail worker or an old, crusty farmer who, though immensely wealthy, operates with the social skills of roadkill.

      Also, it is my profession to provide accurate accounting based on quantifiable facts. It is a profession I was raised into and have been making a reasonable living at for nearly twenty years. I have spent my entire life correcting the accounting mistakes of those very people I just mentioned. So, ask yourself: Whom among us would you trust?

      It did not start with the Vo-Ag teacher, though I had heard there would be a new one, and, in the interest of accuracy, I must say that I was looking forward to meeting him. I was, in fact, curious about him. I had even asked those who had encountered him before me what their impressions of him were. I am a local taxpayer. It is perfectly natural for a taxpayer to be curious about the new public school teacher.

      Plus, new people do not often come into this town with the stated intention of sticking around, as the Vo-Ag teacher had flagrantly declared to Silvia Vontrauer. “I will live out the rest of my days here!” he had told her. Such declarations were of great interest to all of us, though I don’t expect people like you to understand that.

      It started when I purchased that big black sleeping bag of a coat, right before the high school musical and the Thanksgiving holiday, specifically to wear to the quarterly meeting of the Order of the Pessimists, which liked to meet before all the holidays that ask you to drum up renewed happiness for life.