If you like David Sedaris you will like Sam McQuade. His stories are as funny and poignant, and his family is even more dysfuntional. Sam is the eldest child of seven. There are four left. "There is a Road in North Dakota" is his story, growing up Catholic in the 50s and 60s on the northern Great Plains, his travels and adventures in France, the auto accident deaths of two brothers, life as a college English professor, and his eventual return to Bismarck, ND, to enter the family beer business and endure years of an Oedipus struggle with his father. If a life can be described as a metaphor, Sam McQuade's life is a gravel road in North Dakota. You will enjoy the unmarked curves.