"Stubborn, cranky, and conservative, 72-year-old James Page has reached the breaking point with his obstinate, sober, and progressive older sister, Sally Abbot. So, he takes a twelve-gauge shotgun to her color television and chases her up to her room, where she finds herself locked in with only a trashy novel to read, and only apples to eat. Gardner uses the escalation of their colossal feud as a crucible in which he stirs pop culture, New England ethics, myths about the American Revolution, political extremes, and family tragedy and from which he extracts his own hilarious, gothic portrait of a rural Vermont community. "--Page 4 of cover.