Madlands

What Tales of the City was to San Francisco, Madlands is to Madison, Wis. It is a character novel about Madison in the 1980s, highlighting many quirks and nuances of Wisconsin's capital city.

When Cissy Pankhurst comes for a job interview at the university's Department of Museum Studies, she enters a wacky world populated by Pep, a monosyllabic punk rocker; Roz, a lesbian beginning to have serious doubts about her politically correct lover, Erva Mae; and Irv, a hip, leftist lawyer who is not only a feminist man but a celebate one.

Can Cissy and her partner, Jeb, possibly make a life in a strange place like this?

J. Allen Kirsch is a university instructor in Portuguese and Spanish who has lived in Madison, Tucson, Ariz. and New Orleans, La.

New Orleans Times-Picayune: It will make you remember the heartbreak and wisdom and laughs that can be acquired in only two semesters.

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