Big Sausage is the picaresque account of the trials and tribulations of young Vlado Novosel, a big-hearted screwup who charms the ladies of Croatian Strawberry Hill until a surprise pregnancy yokes him into matrimony. To support his burgeoning family in Depression-era Kansas City, Vlado quits his job as a meat-cutter at the Armour plant to open a butcher shop with his cousin, Joe. Their efforts to share his stinky kobasa with the world continually place the hapless Vlado at odds with himself, the Catholic Church, and the women in his life, as he struggles to keep his heart intact and his head above water. Inevitably, the cousins run afoul of the Pendergast mob, while doubts resurface about the paternity of Vlado's beloved daughter. All along, we're pulling for Vlado, a sausage-wielding Don Quixote, aided and abetted in his quest by a colorful cast of enablers and disablers in the Strawberry Hill community, reincarnated for the modern reader, all determined to eat, drink, and bluff their way to a better life.