No one knows the people of Wooster, Ohio better than Vivian Dalton, and she’d be the first to tell you that. She calls it intuition. Her teenage daughter, Charlotte, calls it eavesdropping. She and the other women who work at Ohio Bell aren’t supposed to listen in on conversations, but they do, and all have opinions on what they hear―especially Vivian. One cold December night, she listens in on a call between that snob Betty Miller and someone whose voice she can’t quite place and hears something shocking. Betty’s mystery friend has news that, if true, will shatter Vivian’s tidy life—humiliating her and making her the laughingstock of the town. Written with a dark, sharp edge, The OPERATOR is a richly imagined, clever story of women and families, secrets and gossip, class and resentment that brilliantly captures the fraught tensions and emotional complexity of small-town lives in mid-twentieth-century America.

“Berg’s debut novel captures the plucky spirit of a 1950’s telephone operator, the charm of a Midwest town, and the secrets that threaten to change both of them forever.”

—Booklist

“The relationship between the characters, the complexities of relationships, the jaw-dropping setting, this book is just perfect.”

—Frost Magazine, UK

“A pitch-perfect evocation of small town 50s America.”
—People Magazine, UK

“In this well-plotted comic drama of small-town life, Berg combines the technicolour gloss of a Cary Grant film with the humdrum humour of Garrison Keillor. She keeps the surprises coming right until the end.”

—Daily Mail, UK

“Funny and fast-paced, this intriguing tale of loose lips sinking relationships will make you wistful for days gone by. ”

— Heat Magazine, UK

“. . .weaves in an unexpected thread of race relations…sibling rivalry and class conflict, to create a compelling debut novel.”

—The Minneapolis Star Tribune