Greg

Greg Pendleton is fine.

Ask him. He'll tell you. He's fine.

Greg is 52, recently divorced, and a quality auditor from Dayton, Ohio - a man so reliable that his voicemail greeting hasn't changed since 2006. He flies to Manila for a routine supplier audit. Five days. He's done it before. There is a checklist.

Then an email from his boss appears to offer him some flexibility on his return date.

It does not offer him that. But Greg has already read it the way he needed to read it, and Greg is nothing if not thorough.

What follows includes, in roughly this order: a karaoke rendition of "Country Roads" that goes better than anyone expected, two missed flights, a farm, several pigs, a village fiesta at which Greg is seated at the head table for reasons no one explains to him, and a green satin sash with GREG printed on it in gold letters, which he did not request and now will not take off.

Eventually, there is a wedding. Greg is in it. Greg is not entirely sure how.

Meanwhile, back in Ohio, his son Tyler watches the photos arrive one by one and attempts to explain to his group chat what is happening to his father. The group chat has theories. None of them are correct. The leading one is "midlife crisis," which is wrong, because a crisis implies Greg has noticed.

He hasn't. He's fine.

A comic novel for readers of A Man Called Ove and The Rosie Project.