From Publishers Weekly
A smart, slightly hapless 28-year-old amateur historian aspires to change his fortunes by locating a lost set of President Andrew Johnson's papers in Whorton's winning second novel (after 2003's Approximately Heaven). John Tolley, somewhat cowed by six ill-advised months in New York City ("Can a person so easily whipped as this look forward to any success in life?"), buys a junker from his crooked landlady's crooked nephew and sets out for Johnson's home state of Tennessee—to the eastern counties that Johnson once suggested should become their own state of "Frankland." That Johnson's presidency was widely regarded as a dismal failure doesn't stop Tolley from nosing around the remote, somewhat backward portions of Tennessee, a stranger in a strange land full of colorful locals who understand him just slightly less than he understands them. His quest for nuggets of Johnson-related gold veers off course when he finds himself entangled in a local lottery scandal; other distractions come in the form of friendly locals, including the diminutive hillbilly Boo Price and Dweena, his postal-carrier cousin; there's also Danielle, a visiting would-be television producer from New York, and Professor Luke Van Brun, the backstabbing editor of a history journal who first snubs Tolley and then tries to get to the Johnson papers first. Warm characterization, quiet but exuberantly sly wit and a winning narrator add up to a thoroughly enjoyable escapade. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.


From Booklist
After six months of trying to make it as a professional historian in New York despite his lack of a bachelor's degree, 28-year-old John Tolley heads south. He believes he might discover the lost scrapbook of Andrew Johnson, America's seventeenth president (who never got a bachelor's degree, either--or, for that matter, a grade-school degree).But John's smoke-belching car ends up breaking down in Pantherville, Tennessee, where he rents a rundown cottage from a fellow named Boo and begins to fall for Boo's cousin, Dweena. Pantherville is populated entirely by comic eccentrics, and in that sense alone, John fits in. Pompous, tactless, and yet oddly likable, John is something of a Yankee Ignatius J. Reilly--and while the first-person voice here doesn't match A Confederacy of Dunces, John's unreliable narration is frequently laugh-out-loud funny. A subplot involving a proposed state lottery and a tabloid-TV reporter falls flat compared to the charm of John's quixotic search for Johnson's scrapbook, but readers will forgive such missteps and heartily enjoy this comic romp through the great state of Tennessee. John Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
Kirkus reviews A comedy of misunderstandings blooms to perfection in Whorton's enchanting and erudite caper, set in hillbilly Eastern Tennessee....Whorton's deadpan comic genius exploits misunderstandings for laugh- out-loud results....A joy.

Publishers Weekly Warm characterization, quiet but exuberantly sly wit and a winning narrator add up to a thoroughly enjoyable escapade.

Martin Clark, author of The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living and Plain Heathen Mischief Thoughtful, subversive, wry, and remarkably funny, Frankland is boisterous, bigtime entertainment in the tradition of John Kennedy Toole, Mark Twain, and Eudora Welty. A fine effort from a talented writer.


Review
Martin Clark, author of The Many Aspects of Mobile Home Living and Plain Heathen Mischief Thoughtful, subversive, wry, and remarkably funny, Frankland is boisterous, bigtime entertainment in the tradition of John Kennedy Toole, Mark Twain, and Eudora Welty. A fine effort from a talented writer.


Book Description
With his critically acclaimed first novel, Approximately Heaven, James Whorton, Jr., introduced readers to his droll, poignant, and unforgettable brand of humor. Now, Whorton is back with a wry and ribald tale in the rich tradition of John Kennedy Toole and Walker Percy. Featuring an oddball hero whose book smarts greatly eclipse his interpersonal skills, Frankland captures the down-home wisdom that can often be found only in the small Southern towns of which Whorton writes so captivatingly. John H. Tolley is a socially awkward yet passionate young man who technically never graduated from college, but whose greatest ambition is to become a bow tie-wearing, pipe-smoking historian. For now, all John has in his quest to penetrate the Ivory Tower is a treasured tweed jacket, a tenacity that often tends towards obsessive compulsion, and a hot lead -- he has reason to believe that some potentially scandalous lost papers of Andrew Johnson have been preserved by an heir in Tennessee. With visions of writing a new career-making biography on the often maligned (and even more often ignored) seventeenth president, John heads down to East Tennessee, the area that the outspoken Johnson once proposed splitting off into its own separate state called Frankland. As determined as John is to get down to bookish pursuits upon his arrival, distractions abound in the forms of living people: Van Brun, the gravy-voiced academic in desperate need of a pedicure; McBain, the greens-eating New York newswoman; Boo Price, the neurotic ex-con; and Dweena, the brown-eyed, shy, and stoic mail carrier who may or may not know she's near the center of a clandestine scheme to bring a state lottery to Tennessee. Holed up in a town with folks as quirky as he is, John is destined to find answers, although not necessarily the ones that he set out to uncover. Native and newcomer, highbrow and hillbilly cross paths and tangle riotously in this offbeat, provocative, and at times hilarious second novel. Frankland is further proof of James Whorton's vast literary talent.


Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One I walked twenty-two blocks to find a can of Fix-A-Flat in Brooklyn. Anywhere else in North America, the stuff is kept several cans deep on the store shelves, but not in New York City. At last, in a narrow-aisled bodega, I found a single can, hidden behind a basket of paraffin-coated yucca roots. There were three red price stickers on the cap, stacked carefully so that only the top price could be seen. I got "on line" behind a white-haired woman in a black tunic. There was Latin music playing from a radio. The woman bent over at the counter, scratching at something, then straightened and began to scream in short bursts, like this: "Aah! Aah! Aah! Aah! Aah!" The man at the register took a step back and lifted a golf club over his shoulder. "What is she screaming for?" "I've just won ten thousand dollars!" the woman said. She moved her body to one side, and I saw she had a New York Lottery scratch-off card pinned to the counter with both thumbs. "You did what? Let me see," the man said. He lowered his club, and she turned the card around so he could read it right-side up. "No, no. You won a hundred. There's a decimal in there." "A hundred? You're nuts," she said. "Get your glasses on." He carefully slid on a pair of reading glasses, then bent over and peered at the card again. "Holy mother! You did win ten thousand! Aaaaahhh!" "I told you! Aaah! Aaah! Aaaaaaahhh!" New Yorkers are an excitable breed, but they're quick to settle down again. After a small crowd had gathered and dispersed, things went back to the New York version of normal. The woman tucked the winning card into her wallet and asked the man for a carton of Marlboro Lights and a bottle of Poland water. A man who'd been trying to sell some key rings on the sidewalk asked her to buy him a carton, too. She said she would buy him one pack, and a sandwich if he was hungry. "I'm not hungry," he said. She bought him a pack of Winstons and left. I paid for my Fix-A-Flat. After six disappointing months in the city, this simple can of leak-sealing, tire-inflating foam was my ticket out. I walked the twenty-two blocks to where my yellow Plymouth Duster sat listing at the curb. By the time I got there, I had shaken the can quite thoroughly per the instructions. I attached the tube to the left rear tire valve and released the foam, and the tire inflated. I got on my way. I was twenty-eight years old. The historian Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. had won a Pulitzer by this age. The thought depressed me, and I reminded myself that Professor Schlesinger had the benefit of some early advantages that I lacked, in addition to his no doubt considerable native intelligence. We all have to do what we can with the tools we are given. By this same age of twenty-eight, Andrew Johnson had advanced himself from tailor's apprentice to elected representative in the Tennessee General Assembly. Unlike Schlesinger, the future seventeenth president had no Exeter or Harvard behind him. He'd been taught to write by his teenage bride. I left the city with my windows down, crossing the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, then Staten Island. The Duster could not maintain highway speed with its air conditioner running. I followed U.S. 1 through New Jersey and Pennsylvania, then into Maryland. In Baltimore I spotted a medium-sized fowl bird with an eighteen-inch tail sprinting frantically along the gutter of Belair Road. Traffic was heavy, and the bird, whose head was green with scarlet patches, was badly out of place. I later confirmed it to have been a male ring-necked pheasant. Farther south, in the District of Columbia, I spent an hour outside the Smithsonian Institution's Arts and Industries Building eating two peanut butter sandwiches and trying to make myself feel, with all its fullness, this brief moment of my presence in the nation's capital. History is a difficult thing to imagine. Is it a line in which our lives form a tiny segment? Or is it a massive live beast to whose hump we cling? Andrew Johnson, I recalled, had in early days proposed converting the Smithsonian into a national trade school offering courses of study in carpentry, dentistry, and plumbing. What kind of man had thoughts like that? Already the sights and strains of travel had fatigued me some. I'd gotten a later start than I'd meant to, due to some confusion with my landlady Mrs. Chouri over the security deposit. The sum was not an enormous one, but I had counted on it, especially in the light of certain inconveniences that I had quietly put up with during my six months' tenancy in her building. For example, the shower in my apartment had no shower head. There was only a threaded neck protruding from a hole chipped out between tiles. Warm, cloudy water gurgled from it. My neighbor crushed ice at all hours, on the counter top with a spoon if my ears do not lie. I hadn't complained. Then, that morning, as we walked through the apartment, Mrs. Chouri announced that my book crates had ruined her carpeting. "They have only made a very faint imprint," I said. "Oh no! They have seriously gouged the carpet, which affects the value of my building." The facial absurdity of this proposition did not embarrass her. She clicked her mouth at me, bringing it closer and closer to my face, flicking her fingers at the same time in a characteristic way that she had. When she got so close that her breath moved my hair, I had to leave, deposit or not. Can a person so easily whipped as this look forward to any success in life? I turned the question around in my mind as I sat by myself on the National Mall. I had a postcard on my knee and was attempting to pen a note to my mother, but I could not think what to say in so few words. Across the pavement, a man emerged from the Arts and Industries Building with a puffy Uncle Sam hat on his head. He stopped for a moment, perusing a brochure. The giant hat was made of satin, and it flopped to one side. The man slid the brochure into a trash barrel and wandered away. There are two kinds of historians: those who ascribe agency to vast impersonal forces, and those who give the credit and blame to individual humans. I hold the latter view, though I sometimes have to remind myself of it. I did this now. For a change, I had a plan, and I also had an advantage. Many had studied the scandal-torn presidency of Andrew Johnson; some had the backing of universities and endowed foundations, but I had a secret lead all the others had overlooked. The lead concerned a set of Johnson papers that had been deliberately mislaid, and had stayed lost for over a century. I had reason to think I could find them. All I had to do was stay on task with an animal tenacity. Setbacks and reversals would come, but I would deal with them, drawing on my life's experience and my bit of self-knowledge as needed. Step one had been leaving New York, the city where I developed a tic of excessive blinking. If for no other reason, I had to go away to rest my eyelids. Step two was Tennessee. I got back on the road. The Duster had been mine for one day. I had bought it from Mrs. Chouri's nephew. When I stepped on the gas, a blue haze filled the rearview mirror. I had noted the smoky discharge on first inspecting the car, and when I mentioned it to Mrs. Chouri's nephew he said, "What do you expect for under two thousand dollars?" This throwing the comment back in your face is the New Yorker's idiom. He assured me some smoking was normal for a car with ninety thousand miles on it. But the smoking got worse, and now, on the interstate south of Washington, the yellow Duster started to hesitate. Women and girls scowled down at me from the passenger windows of tall SUVs. The Duster slowed to about fifty miles per hour, and I switched on the hazard lights. The miles and hours passed slowly, until just below Wytheville, Virginia, the right rear tire blew out. I steered the crippled vehicle to the side of the road and got out to look. The sun was behind some hills, and a cantaloupe-colored light washed over the roadside grass and gravel. I found a ragged hole in the side of the tire. I opened the trunk. The jack and spare were under all of my clothes, plus the entire University of Tennessee edition of the papers of Andrew Johnson, seventeen volumes counting the supplement. I had left the carpet-ruining crates in New York, having learned in the course of many moves that to pack a car truly full, the books must go in loose. I decided to wait for morning. I read until dark, then tried to sleep, which was difficult in the little crowded vehicle under the stars at the edge of the freeway with eighteen-wheelers hurtling past all night at an irregular frequency, shedding enormous violent air wakes that made the Duster shudder in place, and some of them blowing their loud horns. At length I dropped off into a fragmentary slumber and dreamed I was a passenger on one of those haunted-house carnival rides where arms and squeals and hatchets pop out from the darkness, and you are strapped into your seat and can hear the wheels rattling underneath you on the tracks. Then, in my dream, I was with my father at the Hall of the Presidents at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. I was ten. A very rich and keen expectancy lay upon us as the auditorium lights dimmed and the curtain rose on a life-sized tableau of the thirty-nine American presidents. My father pointed out the current one, Ronald Reagan, towards the front in a brown suit, alongside Abraham Lincoln and the seated General Washington. I searched the back rows for the two fat presidents, Grover Cleveland and William Howard Taft, and the sideburn-wearing Chester Arthur, and the hollow-cheeked John Tyler. I knew all of their faces well, having studied them daily at school. Their printed portraits were taped up in a row above the chalkboard in our classroom. My father clutched at my arm, and the shiny-haired Reagan spoke: "I welcome you to the Hall of the Presidents, where the chief executives of our nation have gathered to share with you the story of our America." The president's head turned smoothly a few degrees and stopped. His spotlight faded as another one rose on Teddy Roosevelt, who had a look on his face like he was being pinched by devils. His jaw chopped open and shut when he talked. The dozen or so major presidents spoke in turn, each pivoting his head in some way or lifting an arm to emphasize a point. Woodrow Wilson was eulogizing the League of Nations when my father and I noticed a low, monotonous sound. It seemed at first like something mechanical -- a noisy blower in the ventilation system, possibly -- but then a rhythm of muffled speech emerged. Wilson stopped in mid-sentence, his head twisting quizzically. "Deem me not vain or arrogant," the muffled voice said; "yet I should be less than man if under such circumstances I were not proud of being an American citizen, for today one who claims no high descent, one who comes from the ranks of the people, stands, by the choice of a free constituency, in the second place in the government." "What in the hell is that noise?" Teddy Roosevelt said. "There may be those to whom such things are not pleasing, but those who have labored for the consummation of a free Government will appreciate and cherish institutions which exclude none however obscure his origin from places of trust and distinction," the voice went on. "It's Johnson," Woodrow Wilson said. "It ain't me," Lyndon Baines Johnson replied. "No. It's Andrew Johnson," Wilson said. "He's giving his vice presidential inauguration speech again." "Speak not over your interlocutor, nor weary him with tedious iterations," General Washington said from his chair down in front. "You, Senators, you who constitute the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, are but the creatures of the American people; your exaltation is from them; the power of this Government consists in its nearness and approximation to the great mass of the people. You, Mr. Secretary Seward, Mr. Secretary Stanton, the Secretary of the Navy...." "I cannot make out the man's words!" Franklin Delano Roosevelt exclaimed shrilly. He and Washington were the only seated presidents. "His speech is slurred!" "The man has been drinking," Lyndon Johnson said. "He's shit-faced!" "His jaw has no hinge," Thomas Jefferson explained. Jefferson was correct. A spotlight found Andrew Johnson's place high on the back row of presidents and lit up his powdery white face and the obdurate blue eyes. Unlike the major presidents' mannequins, his had limbs and a head that were nonmotorized. His jaw was immobile, and he spoke through what appeared to be a narrow slit between his pale wax lips. "Humble as I am, plebeian as I may be deemed, permit me in the presence of this brilliant assemblage to enunciate the truth that courts and cabinets, the President and his advisors, derive their power and their greatness from the people. Such an assertion of the great principles of this Government may be considered out of place, and I will not consume the time of these intelligent and enlightened persons much longer; but I could not be insensible to these great truths when I, a plebeian, elected by the people the Vice President of these United States, am here to enter upon the discharge of my duties." "Can it," Lyndon Johnson said. "How'd he get drunk when his jaw won't hinge?" Harry Truman said. "I welcome you to the Hall of the Presidents," Ronald Reagan said. Andrew Johnson went on, unfazed. "I, though a plebeian boy, am authorized by the principles of the Government under which I live to feel proudly conscious that I am a man, and grave dignitaries are but men." But then abruptly he stopped speaking, and his short, rigid frame fell forwards into the aisle with a soft crash. He was quiet. "Thank you, Christ," Lyndon Johnson said. "Andy has learned his lesson," Lincoln added. My father, who was still squeezing my arm, said, "That was not at all what I expected, son." I woke up to find the Duster's windows fogged and myself encased in a clammy sweat. Copyright © 2005 by James Whorton, Jr.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"John H. Tolley is a socially awkward yet passionate young man who technically never graduated from college, but whose greatest ambition is to become a bow-tie-wearing, pipe-smoking historian. For now, all John has in his quest to penetrate the Ivory Tower is a treasured tweed jacket, a tenacity that often tends towards obsessive compulsion, and a hot lead - he has reason to believe that some potentially scandalous lost papers of Andrew Johnson have been preserved by an heir in Tennessee. With visions of writing a new career-making biography on the often maligned (and even more often ignored) seventeenth president, John heads down to East Tennessee, the area that the outspoken Johnson once proposed splitting off into its own separate state called Frankland." "As determined as John is to get down to bookish pursuits upon his arrival, distractions abound in the forms of living people: Van Brun, the gravy-voiced academic in desperate need of a pedicure; McBain, the greens-eating New York newswoman; Boo Price, the neurotic ex-con; and Dweena, the brown-eyed, shy, and stoic mail carrier who may or may not know she's near the center of a clandestine scheme to bring a state lottery to Tennessee." Holed up in a town with folks as quirky as he is, John is destined to find answers, although not necessarily the ones that he set out to uncover.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

A smart, slightly hapless 28-year-old amateur historian aspires to change his fortunes by locating a lost set of President Andrew Johnson's papers in Whorton's winning second novel (after 2003's Approximately Heaven). John Tolley, somewhat cowed by six ill-advised months in New York City ("Can a person so easily whipped as this look forward to any success in life?"), buys a junker from his crooked landlady's crooked nephew and sets out for Johnson's home state of Tennessee-to the eastern counties that Johnson once suggested should become their own state of "Frankland." That Johnson's presidency was widely regarded as a dismal failure doesn't stop Tolley from nosing around the remote, somewhat backward portions of Tennessee, a stranger in a strange land full of colorful locals who understand him just slightly less than he understands them. His quest for nuggets of Johnson-related gold veers off course when he finds himself entangled in a local lottery scandal; other distractions come in the form of friendly locals, including the diminutive hillbilly Boo Price and Dweena, his postal-carrier cousin; there's also Danielle, a visiting would-be television producer from New York, and Professor Luke Van Brun, the backstabbing editor of a history journal who first snubs Tolley and then tries to get to the Johnson papers first. Warm characterization, quiet but exuberantly sly wit and a winning narrator add up to a thoroughly enjoyable escapade. Agent, David McCormick. (Jan. 6) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Whorton (Approximately Heaven) sets his zany Southern comedy in the East Tennessee region once slated to be an independent state called Frankland. Although the hapless protagonist, John Tolley, has a r sum full of inadvertent failures, he remains hopeful that he will discover the missing papers of President Andrew Johnson and rewrite American history, or at least Johnson's role in it. In this quest, Tolley meets a larcenous academic, an agoraphobic dog owner, an anorexic reporter pretending to be from New York, and other cartoonish figures, all of whom happily exist somewhere between a folksy 19th century lacking indoor plumbing and a 21st century replete with cell phones. Whorton gently pokes fun at Tolley's pretensions and his neighbors' eccentricities, however the portraits of these characters are thinly drawn, seen through the eyes of a man who hasn't a clue about what is really going on. This minimalist comedy is mildly funny but only an essential purchase for Southern public libraries.-Andrea Kempf, Johnson Cty. Community Coll. Lib., Overland Park, KS Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews