Ring On Deli

A novel about supermarkets and democracy.Brothers Ray and Patrick Markham live in Pennacook Massachusetts a despairing former mill town plagued by feral boars. Its the type of place where streets are named for scoundrel governors and lesser Monopoly properties where even Dr. Chong the high-school principal cant bear to mingle with the locals in her free time.Ray serves as Patricks legal guardian. He spends his days on the Bounty Bag deli line making a mean meatball sandwich critiquing Muscles Carbonaras obscenely suggestive deal flyers and studiously ducking any thought of his future. But Rays tick-like comfort in the static here and now is wildly disrupted when Patrick runs away and a greedy board of directors fires Angie Martini Bounty Bags great-hearted CEO turning Bounty Bag upside down with worker protests.Dr. Chong has troubles of her own. Shes on a longshot campaign for a tax-cap override to fund a less-carcinogenic building for Andrew Johnson Memorial High School. But as Election Day nears the meltdown at Bounty Bag threatens to gut her already shoestring tax base.Patrick meanwhile has fallen into a scam targeting Rays own deli. Things look bleak-until he lucks into the classroom of the dying Mr. Grant whose demanding history class gets him thinking more deeply about Pennacook Bounty Bag and his own past and future.