Longlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction 2023 The darkly comic new novel from the bestselling author of The Portable Veblen "Even funnier, even more romantic than McKenzie's wonderful last." -Karen Joy Fowler. Penny has problems. Freshly divorced from her mobile knife-sharpener husband, she has returned home to Santa Barbara to deal with her grandfather, who is being moved into a retirement home by his cruel second wife. Her grandmother, meanwhile, has been found in possession of a sinister sounding weapon called "the scintillator" and something even worse in her woodshed. Penny's parents have been missing in the Australian outback for many years now, and so Penny must deal with this spiraling family crisis alone. Enter The Dog of The North, a borrowed van replete with yellow gingham curtains, wood paneling, a futon, a pinata, clunky brakes and difficult steering. It is also Penny's getaway car from a failed marriage, a family in crisis and an uncertain future. This darkly, dryly comic novel follows Penny as she sets out in The Dog to find a way through the curveballs life has thrown at her and in doing so, find a way back to herself.