Heart of Junk

A group of wildly different characters populate the booths of the Wichita, KS, Heart of America Antique Mall in Luke Geddes’s debut novel, Heart of Junk. Each person carries a secret, some small and personal and sad, some strange and terrifying, and those secrets all congeal in this hilarious and exceptional book.

Little Lindy Bobo, a pageant princess of some renown, has disappeared in Wichita, and the members of the Heart of America set out to search for her just days before Mark and Grant, hosts of the popular program Pickin’ Treasures, are set to film an episode at the long-suffering antique mall. Newcomers to the mall Seymour and Lee join the old guard, including batty Barbie doll collector Delores and postcard aficionado Ronald, to search for the young girl. The mall’s owner Keith is convinced that the discovery of Lindy will be a great human interest angle for Mark and Grant’s show, but Keith will have to navigate his wife’s addiction to purchasing pottery online and his daughter Ellie’s deep disdain for Wichita as a whole before he can even think about making the Heart of America the star it deserves to be.

Equal parts commentary on what it takes to make us happy and how far we will go to protect ourselves from the things that break our hearts, Geddes’ Heart of Junk is a bit like a carnival ride: twisted, a bit dangerous, and a whole hell of a lot of fun.