Zanesville, Illinois in the 1970s is a time of disillusionment for the precocious 14-year-old narrator of Beard's second novel. Babysitting is a bust after the fire department is called to extinguish a blaze. Marching band is clearly ridiculous--who in their right mind would wear an eight-inch-tall hat that leaves her ears exposed? And, to top it all off, there's no way to say "fudge" with a British accent.
Growing up in a town in which ordering pizza and having it sent to the parochial kid's house just to see whether his parents would actually pay for it doesn't exactly open up a world of opportunities for the narrator. But counterintuitive as it may seem, whitewashed, cookie-cutter Zanesville is an adventure because of, not despite, its lifelessness. After all, a town with a population of approximately 450 (plus a few sickly stray kittens) leaves practically everything to the imagination. It's no wonder that all the residents, not just the restless adolescents, do what they can to make things a bit more...colorful. "Over on my block," the narrator explains, "the semi-interesting people include a woman who comes outside and washes her dog's face with a dishcloth every hour or so, and a widowed man who is so gigantic he needs a kitchen chair to get to his car.... We also have a neighbor named Fudgy, or Uncle Fudge, a barber who has no hair of his own." And that, says the narrator, is about it. Lots of dogs, lots of empty spaces. It seems inevitable, then, that she and her best friend Felicia spend their school days launching projectiles at the lunch lady, hoping to be sent to detention where they can sit next to the boys they think have crushes on them and write notes back and forth about whose boy has the softer-looking hair.
