Fans of "A Prairie Home Companion" on National Public Radio know all about the Fourth of July celebration in Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon — the Living Flag and all that.

But suddenly, thanks to some air time on CNN, the Fourth of July parade in Lake Wobegon has become a very big deal, drawing 32,000 people for Clint Bunsen's last stint as parade chairman.

With CNN due to return again, Bunsen has pulled out all the stops. Among the attractions will be the Leaping Lutherans Parachute Team, the Grand Forks Pitchfork Drill Team, the St. Cloud Shriners Precision Rider Mower Unit and, of course, the Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Ocarina Band.

That's the setup in "Liberty," Keillor's latest Lake Wobegon novel. Readers of the previous novels will know what to expect: a comedy of cascading disaster, as things go hellishly haywire.

But "Liberty" adds an edge that's serious, even depressing. It seems that Bunsen, 60, is undergoing a midlife-and-then-some crisis. He's on the verge of leaving behind the family's Ford dealership and his wife, Irene, to decamp for California in the company of a 34-year-old hussy named Angelica Pflame.

Will the parade make it through the inevitable crisis? More important, will Bunsen survive his crisis? Read "Liberty" and find out.

A warning to those who know Keillor only through his radio monologues: His novels teem with sexual and scatological stuff deemed unfit for public radio. Mind you, Keillor is no dirty old man. But in his books, his edge-of-the-prairie humor takes on a gamy edge.

Still, "Liberty" is fun, if less than good clean fun. As Bunsen muses at one point: "Damn it, you pay a high price for speaking your mind in this town."

For the price of $25.95, you can learn just how high that price reaches.

Harry Levins of Manchester retired last year as senior writer of the Post-Dispatch.