Larry Burns

Being Wendall Larry Burns

Wendall's got problems. A job in flux, a wife with one foot out the door, and his rural community facing economic progress, whether they like it or not. Happiness and stability and order become increasingly difficult to find. He spies glimpses of the happy life through the cracked open doors of the customers along his meat sales route. With a poorly organized bunch of cast-aways, eco-terrorists, and soccer moms, Wendall chooses adaptation over extinction. What emerges after the dream is reduced to smoke? Facing the fact that the dream he reached for was never really his own, Wendall chooses life on new terms, with new people, and a new commitment to his town. But by the time the neighbors stop fighting each other, they may have little left to battle the developers eyeing their trails and natural open spaces. Those same trails and open spaces exist in people too. When the choice is made to develop these resources, who is it exactly that makes the choice? What do those choices say about what it means to be?