OINK: A FOOD FOR THOUGHT MYSTERY

Peter Elliott, a fellow faculty member whose research is sponsored by agricultural behemoth Syndicon, is found unconscious in the university's pigsty holding a piece of cornbread studded with caramelized onions and goat cheese, Addams' signature bread. At the end of every chapter, Newton includes a corn-centric recipe that plays; prominent role in that chapter, from the corn and cherry scones that Emily eats on her way to work in the first chapter to the candy corn cupcakes that she and her ten-year-old daughter, Polly, decorate for Halloween. The novel also addresses the corporatization of postsecondary education, the importance of grant Rinding for the hard sciences, the place of diversity studies in the modern university, the stigmatization of women in the sciences, and the role of genetically-modified organisms in agricultural research.