The Greatest Man in Cedar Hole contributes to the pantheon of imaginary American towns a community that falls somewhere between Winesburg, Ohio and Twin Peaks. The author of young-adult fictions like It Had to Be You, Doyon immediately and believably inflates the town of the title into one of those garish castles kids jump on (and fall out of) at cut-rate carnivals and over-ambitious birthday parties – and I mean that in the best way. Cedar Hole, almost Australian in its isolation and rumored penal roots, has an instant mythology, replete with Lawn Rodeos, severed toes, and ghostly outbound trains that never arrive. Unlike Lake Woebegon, to be above average in Cedar Hole is to be an anomaly; to be “greatest man” of the title, then, is immediately a dubious distinction.

Such is the plight of young Robert Cutler, whose clean clothes, clean speech, and role as “Cedar Hole’s very first volunteer” make him initially the object of curiosity and ridicule. Francis “Spud” Pinkham, on the other hand, is buried under the bad reputations of his eight older sisters, not to mention the grubby frills and fur of their hand-me-downs. Francis plays every part offered him, from town bully to Robert’s nemesis, with reluctance and confusion. Their imaginary battle is a combination mock epic/founding myth crafted by the townspeople for their own amusement, and they perpetuate it with relish even after one of the involuntary adversaries bows out for good.

In a town this small, almost anyone can play the part of near-omniscient narrator, and Doyon moves effortlessly among several, from Delia Pratt, the schoolteacher who bums smokes from her fourth grade students, to Kitty Higgins, the librarian so in love with her job – and her young volunteer – that she alone fails to notice her husband’s wandering eye. Nobody borrows a book at any point in the story, making the library representative of what Cedar Hole’s people won’t learn, just as the city, a few train stops away, stands for what they won’t see. Robert, the only character who visits both places, is also the only one who possesses both “a respect for order and an understanding of the nature of decay,” leaving us wondering if, in the case of Cedar Hole, these are in fact the same thing. His death, fairly early in the novel, leaves the job of “Greatest Man” up for grabs. We know it will fall to Spud eventually, and this certainty is the novel’s one weakness, because, unlike Spud, the reader never doubts that everything will work out in the end. Of course, we also know that Cedar Hole defines happiness, like greatness, in its own dark way, making what seems like simplicity into something both darker and more believable.