My Only Sunshine

"In 1962 the Cubans have their Russian missiles pointed right at the sugarcane plantations of Red Church, Louisiana, but nine-year-old Charlie Boone and his gravel-eating younger brother, Jute, are fixed on velvet ants and the declining health of a horse named Lunch Time. Their father has been sent upriver after a botched convenience store holdup and a walloping with a can of Crisco. Their mother, too has vanished--Memaw and Pawpaw insist she disappeared in a hurricane. But Charlie hasn't given up hope, fondly remembering her singing a campaign song as he dozed off in her lap: You are my sunshine, my only sunshine. When Charlie's long-lost uncle Dan rolls up at the grandparents' farm like a returning war hero in a stolen Buick--the trunk loaded down with erotic contraband, a beautiful girl at his side--the misadventures begin"--Page 2 of cover.