Stuart McGrath, the mayor's erstwhile assistant, tells the tale of his meteoric rise (don't meteors fall?) from volunteer campaign worker to chief of staff for third term Mayor Nathan Higgins. With a new degree in political science, Stuart is fascinated by electoral politics and Scranton, and when he gets the opportunity to fuse them by appointment as the high titled but low paid chief of staff to the mayor, his real education begins. In the style of political satirists Christopher Buckley and P.J. O'Rourke, Gary Ryman looks at small city America as personified by Scranton, Pennsylvania. Hard scrabble fading coal town, Joe Biden blue collar mecca, home of Dunder Mifflin paper, Scranton is all of these and none of these. City government is however, a combination soap opera and situation comedy and Stuart is up for best supporting actor. With inspiration from television and newspapers-sources of questionable accuracy at best-Ryman puts his own spin on how the city runs (or doesn't).