REVIEW 'Second Chances' offers some hope to townspeople

By the end of the story, there's hope for everyone in Ebb.
By SUSAN HALL-BALDUF
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
"In the Land of Second Chances," by George Schaffner (Algonquin, $21.95)
George Schaffner's debut novel, "In the Land of Second Chances," is billed as a cross between "Fried Green Tomatoes" and "It's A Wonderful Life." I can't see the "Tomatoes" resemblance -- no one gets eaten, and the setting is Nebraska, not the South.
But with ridiculous ease, you could cast it with the characters from the classic Christmas movie. Call it "You Can Have a Wonderful Life."
There's Mrs. Bailey, saintly mother, here transformed into our spunky narrator, Wilma Porter, who runs a B & amp;B in the tiny town of Ebb.
There's the evil rich man, Mr. Potter, renamed Clem Tucker and given a slightly improved disposition.
Adorable little Zuzu in the movie becomes dying little Lucy in the book, and her father, Calvin Millet, gets the Jimmy Stewart role: the good-hearted, desperate owner of a business that's been in the family for generations and is now swirling the drain. Calvin owns the only downtown department store left in three counties, his house got crushed in a tornado and he had no insurance.
"I have to tell you the honest truth," Wilma tells us. The townspeople are afraid for Lucy's health, but "we're just as scared of rural America's variety of the domino theory: If Calvin's finances fall apart, then Millet's Department Store will fail. If Millet's goes under, then the county's political resolve will fail, and we'll get a Wal-Mart one week later -- in a ravine 10 miles from nowhere because the land will be dirt cheap. The next thing you know everybody in the county will be shopping for bargains in the ravine, so Loretta" -- who runs the beauty parlor -- "will have to shut her doors, and so will the Starbucks and every other place on Main except for the Corn Palace and the Yune Library."
She condemns Wal-Mart, but accepts Starbucks, which owners of now-defunct neighborhood coffee shops all across the country might tell her is just as predatory.
She goes on, "You may think that I'm exaggerating, but this town is perched on the sad edge of a slippery slope. I went to church and wished to God that I could help in some way, but He sent us a salesman."
Traveling salesman
That's right. These people don't get a clueless angel trying to earn his wings, like in the movie. They get Vernon Moore, ex-treasurer of an Enron-like company, trying to earn his living as traveling salesman.
Or so he says. He sells games of chance. Cards, dice, backgammon. Anything that involves uncertainty--uncertainty, he keeps saying, is the spice of life!
It seems certain that he can't sell anything to poor Calvin, who can barely stew about his failing store for worrying about his little girl. Of course, Vernon walks in knowing all about the store's difficulties and Lucy's illness, because Wilma told him.
Ebb, you see, is the perfect small town. Everyone knows everyone else's business, everyone cares for everyone else's troubles--and everyone tells everyone else all about them.
What a bunch of blabbermouths.
As soon as Wilma introduces Vernon and Calvin, the author starts to cheat: Somehow our increasingly quaint narrator can report to us nearly every conversation in the county, even the ones she wasn't a party to. And we never find out how she knows what was going on. You just have to take it on faith. You have to take a lot of things on faith in this book.
Faith vs. reason
Vernon tells Calvin that when faith fails us, we can turn to reason. Take this paradox: Only a benevolent God could have created this beautiful world. A benevolent God would never allow suffering like Lucy's. Therefore, God is not benevolent.
But, he tells Calvin, we can reason past this. Give me an hour of your time each morning, and I'll convince you that there is hope for Lucy.
Before you know it, there is hope for everyone in Ebb. Some readers may hope they have something else to read. "Second Chances" is a homemade sugar cookie, and not to everyone's taste.
But some of my dear friends are very ill, I have a pregnant daughter living 1,000 miles away, and I just learned that my nephew the Marine is on his way to Fallujah. All this helpless worry, clutching my hands to no good purpose.
Life can be stale and bitter at the same time. That's when you need a major dose of sweetness, and "In the Land of Second Chances" might be just what the doctor ordered.