SOURCE: A review of Goodnight, Nebraska, in Library Journal, January, 1998, p. 143.

[In the following, Michaud explains why Goodnight, Nebraska is "a fine first novel."]

Seventeen-year-old Randall Hunsacker gets off a bus in the flyspeck town of Goodnight, Nebraska, convinced that he'll be gone in a year or so. He has come from Salt Lake City, where he has shot his mother's boyfriend and totaled a stolen car. Randall is in Goodnight only through the intercession of his high school football coach, who has talked the Goodnight coach into becoming Randall's guardian. Randall plays bone-crunching kamikaze football, hangs around with the wrong crowd, and falls in love with Marcy Lockhardt, senior class president, honor student, and cheerleader. The story of their marriage, and that of Marcy's parents, explores the small, unremarkable moments on which lives and loves turn for better or worse, for life or death. A fine first...