The publication of his virtuoso novel Infinite Jest confirmed David Foster Wallace as "one of the big talents of his generation" (The New York Times). Readers who hunger for more will be richly satisfied by his first novel, The Broom of the System, a bracingly funny and fiercely original story.

The mysterious disappearance of her great-grandmother and twenty-five other elderly residents from a Shaker Heights nursing home has left Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman emotionally stranded on the edge of the Great Ohio Desert. But that is simply one problem of many for the hapless switchboard operator—seriously compounded by her ongoing affair with her boss, Rick Vigorous; the impending TV stardom of her talking cockatiel, Vlad the Impaler, on the Christian Broadcasting Network

Hilarious and wildly inventive, this novel, by the author of The Girl With Curious Hair, takes off where reality ends, as its protagonist, switchboard operator Lenore Stonecipher Beadsman, is inundated with more than the usual share of unusual problems.