Fred is a small town in Texas and our main character is a preacher’s kid named Mark. Mark’s family has moved around a lot, but now ends up in Fred. Brad Whittington writes with a lot of humor as Mark navigates the turbulent waters of 1968 adolescence, trying to be a hip, bell-bottomed teenager who is plopped suddenly into a plaid-shirt-and-blue-jeans redneck community. He muses about his peers:
With graceless effort they shot deer, snagged perch, played football, and rattled in pickups down dirt roads. George Jones and Tammy Wynette oozed from their pores like sweat…. They dipped snuff, spitting streams like some ambulatory species of archerfish…. They split logs and infinitives, chopped wood and prepositional phrases, dangled fish bait and participles– all with equal skill.
When he would mention Alice Cooper to his friends there, they would respond with “Who is she?”
Mark’s dad, the preacher, is hilarious too. His kids are used to his tongue-in-cheek biblical-styled expressions. Even when pushed to limits of his seemingly endless patience by lug nuts which won’t budge, his “swearing” went like this…
A pox on the miserable cur who in a drunken frenzy of iniquitous pride ever blasphemed the Name of all that’s holy by inflicting the innocent and unsuspecting saints with such a diabolical device as the impact wrench.
Throughout the story, Mark searches for spiritual truth. He doesn’t want to blindly accept the faith he’s been taught throughout his life, but also doesn’t want to offend his parents by expressing his doubts (or suffer their wrath!). But when he finally has the courage to speak to his father, he finds grace and wisdom.
I enjoyed this book so much, it’s exciting to know there are more books in this series and quite a few penned by this witty author.