"Wipe that smile off your face is a redundant expression," Alice claims, "for the cheeks of the face are the only cheeks that can support a smile." Alice, an extraordinary writer of comic prose, is an elderly wealthy widow with no heirs who had kept her wealth a private matter. She crafts a unique plan to give away seven million dollars.

A HAIRPIECE NAMED DENIAL tells her story as she unleashes her creativity, generosity, wisdom, and offbeat humor. Throughout the narrative, Alice interacts with a young man who holds a B.A. in Philosophy and wears an Elvis-pompadour hairpiece. She hires him as her "deluxe cleaning lad," to use her label. Set in a small town on the Great Plains in the nineteen-eighties and beyond, this comic novel harbors serious insights into the human condition.