Rides of the Midway: A Novel

Mississippi Teenager Noel Weatherspoon is many things: an unwitting clairvoyant, an extreme asthma sufferer, a ghost-seeing insomniac, an endearing dopehead, a wanna-be erotic photographer, a would-be baseball star, a regretful vandal, a lamentable virgin who becomes an older woman's sex toy, and a never-accused, somnambulant mercy-killer.

Noel is haunted by the specter of the boy he knocked into a coma while sliding into home in Little League and by the spirit of his father who died in Vietnam. He is equally haunted by his embarrassing failures with girls and his own dark secrets. The surely damned Noel must navigate all manner of bible thumpers, from gossiping Baptists, Pentecostal cousins, born-again Christians, and righteous Methodists to a stepfather who bears an uncanny resemblance to Billy Graham. Funny and dark, Rides of the Midway is a brilliantly told story about a boy whose life spins completely out of control.