Nailing It is a warm, knowing, and often hilarious commemoration of small-town life during the Great Depression of the 1930s. A celebration of the humor and indomitability of the human spirit, the tale tells the story of one young man, a local volunteer fireman, who is determined to rescue his neighbors—from boredom and sadness if nothing else—in the tiny village of Oliver, New York, deep in the snow country east of Buffalo. He banishes both ennui and melancholy with community hijinks of manic inventiveness and, too frequently breathtaking embarrassment, in his last years before a fatal encounter with an unsuspected cancer.
Vivid, moving, and also wickedly funny, the tale is a reminder that although life is short and unpredictable, its transience and danger can often be transformed by the love—and occasionally also by the downright silliness—of those whose company we treasure: a comic paean to life in the midst of death.
