The road to Wellville / [electronic resource] T. Coraghessan Boyle.

Diagnosis: Of steak and sun -- Scavengers of the sea -- Sears' White Star liquor cure -- Father to all, father to none -- Civilized bowel -- Biggest little city in the U.S.A. -- Symptomitis -- Changing the flora -- Per-fo -- Thankful bird -- Therapeusis: 'Tis the season -- Baser appetites -- Cold in the middle -- Advertising game -- Kellogg's Kirk -- From humble beginnings -- Organized rest without ennui -- Groundhog day -- Prognosis: Questions, questions, questions -- Letter and the note -- Freikorper Kultur -- Rigid control and other matters -- Per-fo factory -- Sword of fire -- Goguac lake -- Fatal luncheon -- Fireworks -- Decoration Day.

Will Lightbody is a man with a stomach ailment whose only sin is loving his wife, Eleanor, too much. Eleanor is a health nut of the first stripe, and when in 1907 she journeys to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg's infamous Battle Creek Spa to live out the vegetarian ethos, poor Will goes too. So begins T. Coraghessan Boyle's wickedly comic look at turn-of-the-century fanatics in search of the magic pill to prolong their lives--or the profit to be had from manufacturing it. Brimming with a Dickensian cast of characters and laced with wildly wonderful plot twists, Jane Smiley in the New York Times Book Review called The Road to Wellville "A marvel, enjoyable from beginning to end.