The Last Studebaker

In this novel of a woman in search of the meaning of family, "Hemley draws a quirky, droll road map of the human heart, with all its foibles and dangers" ( Publishers Weekly).   In 1963, when Lois Kulwicki's father loses his job at Studebaker along with hundreds of other workers, he acts as if he has just been promoted. He buys a new car (the only non-Studebaker he's ever purchased) and takes his family on vacation. On the way home, Mom dumps Dad at a Stuckey's, and that's the last they see of him.   Thirty years later, Lois has a family of her own, as fractured as her childhood family. Divorced but still living with her ex, she decides to move out with her two daughters and start over. But then a stranger named Henry enters their lives. As they create their own ersatz family, Lois tries to recover something of what she lost, beginning with a search for her abandoned father. The Last Studebaker is a heartfelt comic tale of lives changed forever, after the last Studebaker rolled off of the assembly line in South Bend, Indiana.   "[Hemley] has infused just the right amount of humor and pathos into his exploration of how people discover and maintain connections in these bewildering times." — The New York Times Book Review