We Came All This Way — Mike Heppner

We Came All This Way is the first novel in eight years from the author whom Entertainment Weekly calls �"... a fearsome cultural critic disguised in a novelist's clothing,” and the Washington Post calls �"... a young master of this old art.” It's the story of Roseanne Okerfeldt, a thirty-one year old mother of four who finds her life in Grand Rapids, Michigan stultifying, and runs off with her brother and eldest child to live on a decommissioned oil rig in the middle of the North Atlantic.

There, Roseanne and the thirty-seven other residents of �"Mobility” (as they call their new home) struggle against the elements and their own basic oddness to establish an independent society based on utopian principles of cooperation and self-sufficiency. As the months pass, the pressure increases on Roseanne to return to Michigan and confront her former life, while Mobility itself - with its delicate balance of extreme personalities - splinters toward chaos.

Roseanne tells her own story in a comic, aware, and self-deprecating voice, starting with her childhood in suburban Ohio, her early marriage and pregnancies, and her experiences on Mobility, which involve pirate attacks, the vague omens of a Belgian soothsayer, and a man with blue skin. We Came All This Way is about finding a place in the world and trying to grow up before your kids do.