Synopsis
For a runaway boy who goes by the name “Punkzilla,” kicking a meth habit and a life of petty crime in Portland, Oregon, is a prelude to a mission: reconnecting with his older brother, a gay man dying of cancer in Memphis. Against a backdrop of seedy motels, dicey bus stations, and hitched rides, the desperate fourteen-year-old meets a colorful, sometimes dangerous cast of characters. And in letters to his sibling, he catalogs them all—from an abusive stranger and a ghostly girl to a kind transsexual and an old woman with an oozing eye. The language is raw and revealing, crackling with visceral details and dark humor, yet with each interstate exit Punkzilla’s journey grows more urgent; will he make it to Tennessee in time? Told in epistolary style, this daring novel offers a narrative worthy of Kerouac and a keen insight into the power of chance encounters.
About Adam Rapp
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Adam Rapp is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, and filmmaker. He has written several young adult novels, including Punkzilla, The Buffalo Tree, and 33 Snowfish, and the adult novel, The Year of Endless Sorrows. His plays include Nocturne, the Pulitzer Prize finalist Red Light Winter, and The Metal Children. In 2005 he directed his first film, Winter Passing, starring Ed Harris, Zooey Deschanel and Will Ferrell. George OConnor is an author, illustrator and cartoonist. His graphic novel work includes Journey Into Mohawk Country, in which he illustrated the journal of the seventeenth-century Dutch trader Harmen Meyndertsz van den Bogaert, and his Olympians series, which retells the classic Greek myths in comics form. He has also published several childrens picture books, including the New York Times best-selling Kapow, Sally and the Some-Thing, and Uncle Bigfoot. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
Published March 12, 2010
by Candlewick.
256 pages
Genres:
Young Adult, Literature & Fiction, Children's Books.
Fiction
