Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin (2000)

Advanced Reading Copy. Signed.

Near fine in decorated boards.

His own mother referred to him as a "nervous child," an "odd child."

He was the class clown - the skinny kid with a cowlick, freckles, jug ears, and an overbite. He could wiggle his ears and fold his eyelids back. He was obsessed with sex, comic books, and beatniks. He tried to fly off his front porch like Superman only to land flat on his face. He was the boy who saved his money, bought a mail-order gun, and shot himself in the foot - over and over again.

How did this boy get to be the most famous son of Itta Benna, Mississippi? From losing a father as a child to losing a child as a father, from the rawness of youth to the rage and redemption of adulthood, Lewis Nordan's Boy With Loaded Gun is a powerful elegy about a hopeful boy finding his way in a seemingly hopeless world.