SOURCE: A review of Goodnight, Nebraska, in Booklist, February 1, 1998, p. 899.

[In the following review Leventhal considers McNeal's treatment of small-town life in Goodnight, Nebraska.]

Few novels written today make the reader want to leap inside and join the action. Goodnight, Nebraska, McNeal's first novel, is just one of those gems. His story about love and hatred, loss and redemption in small-town Goodnight—the name of the town at the center of the story—dispels any rose-colored images of rural life. The harsh, realistic depiction of the meanness and evil produced from ignorance and isolation is reminiscent of lives in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Still, McNeal's mythical small town remains warmly compelling, and as its name suggests, dreamlike, otherworldly, and outside of time. His storytelling is magnificent, deftly changing time, place, and narrator to create a spellbinding plot. He brings to life a great cast of characters: Randall...