{"product_id":"love-and-industry-a-midwestern-workbook-9781953368584","title":"Love and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSonya Huber, author of the award-winning \u003c\/strong\u003e\u003cem\u003ePain Woman Takes Your Keys, and Other Essays from a Nervous System\u003c\/em\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e, offers a candid, lyrical look inside the unsung world of exurban Illinois.\u003c\/strong\u003eNew Lenox, Illinois, is a small town deep in the corn grid of the Midwest, where it runs up against the grid of south Chicagoland, a placeless location marked by geographical flatness and dwindling industry. It's also where Sonya Huber grew up, and in the twenty essays collected here, she lovingly explores the ways New Lenox--and the Midwest more generally--has come to define her life. Here, you'll find portraits of Huber's parents as they tirelessly run a small business, homages to the Gen-X joys of wearing flannel, secret insights about being a Pizza Hut waitress, and odes to the ecstasy of blasting classic rock as your car hurls along I-80. Whether she's writing about \u003cem\u003eAll in the Family\u003c\/em\u003e, detailing the region's influence on David Foster Wallace, or exploring the poetry embedded in a can of Miller High Life, her vision is astute and her prose convincing. Sometimes experimental and always inventive, \u003cem\u003eLove and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook \u003c\/em\u003etakes seriously Chicagoland's farthest reaches--gritty, sweeping, a region full of its own distinct feelings of \"almostness\"--and transforms them into a map of the heart, a ramshackle territory marked by memory, family, regret, determination, and wonderment\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Belt Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50635057234194,"sku":"9781953368584","price":14.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_b269a860-553a-4e81-b4c7-4989f3b4947a.jpg?v=1732830789","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/love-and-industry-a-midwestern-workbook-9781953368584","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}