America's Boy A Memoir

In the tradition of such quirky and smart coming-of-age memoirs as Augusten Burroughss "Running with Scissors" and Haven Kimmels "A Girl Named Zippy, Americas Boy" is an arresting and funny tale of growing up different in Americas heartland. Wade didnt quite fit in. While schoolmates had crewcuts and wore Wrangler jeans, Wade styled his hair in imitation of Robbie Benson circa "Ice Castles" and shopped in the Sears husky section. Wades father insisted on calling everyone honeyeven male gas station attendants. His mother punctuated her conversations with WHAT?! and constantly answered herself as though she was being cross-examined. He goes to school with a pack of kids called goat ropers who make the boys from "Deliverance" look like honor students. And he both loved and hated his perfect older brother. While other families traveled to Florida and Hawaii for vacation, Wades family packed their clothes in garbage bags and drove to their log cabin on Sugar Creek in the Missouri Ozarks. And it is here that Wade found refuge from his everyday struggle to fit inuntil a sudden, terrible accident on the Fourth of July took his brothers life and changed everything. Equally nostalgic, poignant, funny, and compelling, this is a story of what it is to be normal, what it means to fit in, and what it means to be yourself.Rouse, Wade is the author of 'America's Boy A Memoir', published 2006 under ISBN 9780525949343 and ISBN 0525949348.