Two Over Easy All Day Long - by Shari Lane (Paperback)

About the Book

Sentenced to community service and a low-wage job, a disgraced CEO learns how creatively other people keep secrets, bend rules, cook, play, form community, handle tragedies, survive desertions, drug lords, kidnappers, poets, and neighbors.

Book Synopsis

When the president of a toy company, guilty of a tragic negligence, is sentenced to a year of minimum-wage work in an Oregon diner, he loses his familiar Manhattan privileges. But Giles Gibson, now "Tony," gradually learns to appreciate the tangles and complexities of "ordinary" lives, and those who somehow manage to keep on going with compassion and wit. The diner's (secretly kindhearted) boss has other secrets too, as does the curmudgeonly cook. (He'd gone AWOL from Vietnam half a century earlier.) Much of the novel is set in Sunnyside Up, the diner where staff and customers mingle. There's a drug ring just outside town, headed by the ex-sheriff, a lavender farm whose workers tend to be undocumented, a gay couple who aren't quite in or out of the closet.... Each character is an individual, created uniquely by Shari Lane's colors, textures, language, subtle symbols, and deep sense of balance.

Review Quotes

Mystery enshrouds the small town of Motte and Bailey, Oregon, when the privileged CEO of ABC Toys from New York is sentenced to community service there, after one of his toys causes the death of a young girl. Giles-turned-Tony wears an ankle monitor while dishwashing in Sunnyside Up, a diner, alongside a cast of characters who have their own penance to perform. Among the many personalities are a Vietnam vet gone AWOL, a young man who can't read, a detective investigating a drug ring, and a pregnant woman hoping to recapture her life and finish her accounting degree. Shari Lane creates characters with elegant humor, wit, and irony, revealing in surprisingly poignant scenes each character's potential for evolving beyond their frailties and past sins, through their work together and compassionate influence upon each other at Sunnyside Up.

Kip Robinson Greenthal, author of Shoal Water (Pushcart Prize nominee, Landmark Prize for Fiction, Silver Medal from Nautilus Book Awards).

Good pacing, humane but honest characterizations, flashes of humor in the details-the gloved handshake, the urinal smell in the back of the bus.... It starts with a child's avoidable death, and that moment is terrifying ... but Lane doesn't milk it. It happened, there is some measure of accountability, and off the story goes.

Rachel George, independent thinker, Old Books on Front Street

Replete with entertaining small town characters, a dead body, humorous exchanges, a dog named after a popular teabag, and a dose of surprising sweetness, Shari Lane's novel tells a moving tale of transformation, mystery . . . and perhaps redemption.

Stephanie Barbé Hammer, author of Journey to Merveilleux City and Pretend Plumber.

In Two Over Easy All Day Long, Shari Lane brings a small-town cast of characters to life with affection and humor. Sunnyside Up, the diner where they work, is the kind of place you wish you could frequent, even at the risk of getting a scalding coffee bath if owner Nancy Marone thinks you're up to no good. Don't let the whimsy fool you, though-there's deep emotion and pathos here, too. A novel is only worthwhile if it's also true, and by that I mean emotionally true. The characters' experiences have to change them, and show them truths about themselves, about life, about what it means to be fully human. Two Over Easy All Day Long does just that. A must-read.

Charlotte Rains Dixon, Writing Coach, author of The Bonne Chance Bakery and Emma Jean's Bad Behavior

Clueless corporate executive makes a big mistake, finds himself exiled to a small town with an ankle monitor and a new name. And a thankless job at a diner straight out of the 1950s, run by a team of loveably weird characters. Shari Lane's distinctive take on a fish-out-of-water tale is delightfully quirky, engrossing, and poignant.

Deborah Guyol, author of Elderberry Wine Vintage 2010: Writings from the Clark College Mature Learning Program, co-author of Pride and Prejudice and Kitties