cover image Our Lady of the Prairie

Our Lady of the Prairie

Thisbe Nissen. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $25 (368p) ISBN 978-1-328-66207-1

Nissen (Out of the Girls’ Room and Into the Night) relies too heavily on authorial gymnastics in her latest, which explores what happens in middle-aged theater professor Phillipa Maakestad’s life after she falls in love and decides to blow up her marriage. The tornado that subsequently roars through town and disrupts the wedding of her emotionally fragile daughter, Ginny, at the once-Catholic Our Lady of the Prairie Church is a metaphor for the ensuing emotional chaos. Phillipa’s attempts to reclaim control—allowing her husband to spank her, handling her daughter’s hostility about the affair—are less than successful. Meanwhile, she becomes obsessed with proving that her belligerent European mother-in-law collaborated with the Nazis during World War II, and her decision to volunteer for John Kerry’s 2004 presidential run is a dramatic distraction she does not need. Nissen excels at capturing her protagonist as a woman on the edge—the elation, the sex, the emotional roller coaster, the questionable choices. But the mother-in-law subplot is too much for the narrative to support. It affords Nissen the chance to spin a self-contained, creative, and ironic 58-page fantasy, but Phillipa’s fixation remains nebulous. Is it a diversionary tactic against the circus her life has become, or a sign that she has lost touch with the people around her? This big question mark overshadows the book’s other elements, resulting in an intriguing yet uneven story. [em](Jan.) [/em]