Overture: your tax dollars at work -- Fuck city -- Two four zero six zero -- Motivated reasoning -- Two kinds of people -- Without any mental reservation -- FNG -- Wilderness of mirrors -- From the people who brought you the F-14 Tomcat and the Grant family canoes -- Privately owned vehicle -- Down by the river -- Lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver -- Namaste -- Christmas in July forever -- Earth's most customer-centric company! -- Polo shirts -- Anarchy on the high seas -- United States Postal Service, Ma'am! -- High lonesome -- The things I carried -- A peaceful transfer of power -- Santa Claus and Sam Colt fistfight in heaven -- Feast of the Epiphany -- Under color of authority -- Book of the month -- Rescue party -- The thousand natural shocks -- Thank you for your service -- Pancakes -- The varieties of religious experience in the rural letter carrier -- The last mile -- Acknowledgments -- About the author.

"Steve Grant was laid off in March of 2020. He was fifty and had cancer, so he needed health insurance, fast. Which is how he found himself a rural letter carrier in Appalachia, back in his old hometown [of Blacksburg, Virginia]. Suddenly, he was the guy with the goods, delivering dog food and respirators and lube and heirloom tomato seeds and Lord of the Rings replica swords. He transported chicken feed to grandmothers living alone in the mountains and forded a creek with a refrigerator on his back. But while he carried the mail, he also carried a whole lot more than just the mail, including a family legacy of rage and the anxiety of having lost his identity along with his corporate job. And yet, slowly, surrounded by a ragtag but devoted band of letter carriers, working this different kind of job, Grant found himself becoming a different kind of person. He became a lifeline for lonely people, providing fleeting moments of human contact and the assurance that our government still cares."-- Provided by publisher