There's a Slight Chance I Might Be Going to Hell: A Novel of Sewer Pipes, Pageant Queens, and Big Trouble, Paperback

The first novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Idiot Girls' Action-Adventure Club is a rollicking tale of small-town peculiarity, dark secrets, and one extraordinary beauty pageant.

When her husband is offered a post at a small university, Maye is only too happy to pack up and leave the relentless Phoenix heat for the lush green quietude of Spaulding, Washington. While she loves the odd little town, there is one thing she didn't anticipate: just how heartbreaking it would be leaving her friends behind. And when you're a childless thirtysomething freelance writer who works at home, making new friends can be quite a challenge.

After a series of false starts nearly gets her exiled from town, Maye decides that her last chance to connect with her new neighbors is to enter the annual Sewer Pipe Queen Pageant, a kooky but dead-serious local tradition open to contestants of all ages and genders. Aided by a deranged former pageant queen with one eyebrow, Maye doesn't just make a splash, she uncovers a sinister mystery that has haunted the town for decades.

" Laurie Notaro] may be the funniest writer in this solar system."--The Miami Herald

Laurie Notaro has been fired from seven jobs, laid off from three, and voluntarily liberated from one. Despite all that, she has managed to write a number of New York Times bestselling essay collections. She lives with her husband in Oregon, where--according to her mother, who refuses to visit--she sleeps in a trailer in the woods.