A Town Called Immaculate
By Peter Anthony
Macmillan £14.99
FT bookshop price: £11.99

Taciturn Vietnam vet Ray Marak struggles to keep his dairy farm solvent in Immaculate, Minnesota, a devoutly Catholic town whose men are “too much in love with liquor, cows, or both”. Ray’s beautiful high-school sweetheart Renee has endured her own parents’ demise and Ray’s presumed death in action before he stumbled back into her life and a decade of strained but solid marriage.