In tall cotton

In this sensual, beautifully written coming-of-age tale, debut novelist Charles Hulse transports readers to a time when radios crackled with the sounds of Benny Goodman and the Dorsey Brothers, when ice cream was a rare, hand-churned treat, when destitute farm folk traversed Route 66 in search of elusive property, and nobody ever talked about the things a sexually precocious teenage boy might encounter along the way...

Sandwiched in the back seat of a Model A Ford, between his older brother and baby sister, Totsy Woods has, in a sense, seen it all - from a dusty Ozark farm to the golden cities of the California coast; from sun-parched Albuquerque to the bright lights and flooded streets of Phoenix. Yet even schoolyard games with other curious boys could never have prepared him for the passionate, strangely exhilarating journey that unfolds against the backdrop of the Depression Era American Southwest. Now, his forbidden stirrings - shrouded in layers of shame and guilt - force Totsy to face a difficult lesson about growing up and being a man...on his own terms.