The publicity for East Providence native Ron McLarty’s new book, Art in America, describes it as “a funny and heartwarming novel.” That’s a tall order. To be funny or heartwarming is tough enough. To be both is asking for an awful lot.

McLarty tries hard — maybe too hard — but doesn’t quite come up with the magic formula. He does hit his comedic target enough times to make this an entertaining read, however.

The book’s protagonist is Steven Kearney, an abject failure as a writer with a stack of justly unpublished books, among them The Barrelli Retrospective Works, a 1,930-page epic about an oil painter/short order cook at Manny’s Big Eats in Cranston. When we meet the hapless Kearney, his wife has just left him and he’s been thrown out of his Manhattan apartment.

But soon thereafter, a miracle — Kearney is offered a job as playwright-in-residence by the historical society in the small town of Creedemore, Colo., which is looking for someone to write a play about the town. Why anyone would pay this guy to write a stop sign, much less a play, is something of a mystery, but if you’re going to buy into the plot at all, you just have to go along.

When Kearney gets to Creedemore, he finds the town in turmoil. A young man named Red Fields, who likes to be called Mountain Man, decides to start a river-rafting business and leads an expedition down the Upper Rio Grande. Alas, the river runs through the property of cranky 96-year-old feed store magnate Ticky Lettgo, who promptly shot out all the rafts as they floated by.

This leads to a legal battle and a confrontation between Creedemore’s cowboys, who back Ticky, and the Liberty Society, a bunch of cartoonish leftists out of Boulder. They’re mostly ineffectual buffoons, although one of them is hatching a very nasty scheme.

McLarty has a pair of big ideas lurking within his mostly lighthearted setting: the power of love to redeem an apparently hopeless life, and the power of art to bring a community together.

But Kearney, who falls in love with an artist and cancer survivor Molly Dowie, never generates enough interest to make the reader care all that much about his redemption. Some of the novel’s secondary characters turn out to be a lot more compelling, such as Sheriff Petey Myers, a former Boston cop who carries on a running conversation with his dead partner, Reedy. (McLarty writes a terrific action scene when Myers confronts a pair of killers early in the novel.)

As for the power of art, Kearney’s play is supposed to be a huge local hit that unites Creedemore in the warm glow of great theater. But there’s considerable description of the play, including some of its dialogue, in the book, and it just seems ridiculous, even allowing for a heavy dose of whimsy.

asmith@projo.com