SOURCE: A review of Goodnight, Nebraska, in Kirkus Reviews, January 1, 1998, p. 14.

[The following review summarizes and assesses the plot of Goodnight, Nebraska.]

The intensity of desperation in the American heartland marks this first novel by McNeal [Goodnight, Nebraska], as married life for a young Nebraska couple proves rocky, and even rockier for the bride's long-married parents.

When Randall Hunsacker's father died and his mother moved herself and her two children in with her lover, who was also sleeping with Randall's sister Louise, something in the boy snapped. After shooting loverboy and trying to kill himself, this 17-year old has a future that's none too bright—especially when his family moves away from Utah, leaving him behind in the hospital—except that his football coach finds him a second chance in Goodnight, on the Nebraska panhandle, where he can start fresh. Soon a star player with a rep for...