DANDELION CROSSING

Stanton’s novel tracks the intersecting lives of customers and employees of a 1980s mall.

It’s 1983, and a brand-new indoor shopping center has just opened up on the edge of a large Ohio city. Built on the former site of a meadow filled with wildflowers, Dandelion Crossing is all things to all people: an eyesore and traffic magnet to local homeowners; a place of employment for lonely do-gooders, bookish transplants, and ex-convicts; a mark of progress for an ambitious local politician; and a glass-ceiling-shattering zenith in the career of the mall’s female executive. It’s a place where an artist, recently relocated from New York City and suffering from heartbreak, finds his groove coaching a team of high schoolers in a breakdancing competition; where a closeted gay teen decides to risk being recognized while seeing a movie about a male stripper; and where a widow in need of a new hairdresser finds herself in the chair of a spiky-haired goth whose receptionist seems unfamiliar with the concept of a perm. The mall brings together locals from across the metropolitan area who might otherwise never meet, allowing storylines to converge unexpectedly and long-simmering emotions to burst forth like water from the mall’s fountain. Stanton revels in the ’80s setting, enhancing the stories with funny period references. A gang of rowdy teenage girls calls themselves The Benatars, for instance, and a hapless pet store employee evaluates her own sexual orientation based on the era’s detective shows: “Truth be told, Amy wasn’t sure where she fell. Except for her persistent crush on TV’s mustachioed Matt Houston, whose devil-may-care independence she greatly admired, it was rare for her to feel sexual attraction to anyone.” (There’s even a phone-call cameo by art icon Keith Haring.) In Stanton’s capable hands, the sterile mall quickly transforms into an unlikely town square: a place where people not only search for goods and services, but for connection in all its forms.

A heartfelt and deeply human collective portrait set in a palace of consumerism.