Richard Guesser was once mayor of the all-American township of Wallace, in Wabasha County, Minnesota. Now an internee at the Carlton Creek Psychiatric Hospital, he spends his nights writing a clandestine affidavit. The document hopes to expose to the world the large-scale water tainting and behavioral control experiments once deployed at his hometown—a conspiracy master-minded by a Machiavellian psychology professor turned politician. A tale of paranoia in the likes of Thomas Pynchon, Richard’s document, through the chronicling of the heydays of an ordinary Midwestern family and the politics of the townlet, begs for a vote of confidence. But who is sane or insane: the psychiatrist or the patient?