Publisher's Synopsis
It's true, what many say. Time and age have a way of rounding off the edges and making jagged pieces of the past seem clear and smooth and bright. But for those of us growing up in the small prairie town of Mandan, North Dakota, in the 1950s, those truly were times when every day was an adventure, every neighbor was a story, and everyone belonged somewhere because we were all connected and trusted others to know that. Young Moose knows it's going to be an unusual year when his new teacher looks like a goat and is even ornerier, a neighborhood posse is hot on the trail of a felon, and the ancient ghosts are dancing in the light of a full moon. His days are full of trials including the cancelling of Christmas, tittering on the brink of flunking a grade, and losing his position as catcher on the baseball team. It's also a time of runaway horses and bucking pigs, a quest for the truth of the birds and the bees, and of taking a giant step towards manhood. Come follow Moose and his friends; an Indian Shaman, a Gypsy King, and a mystical boy named Mickey as they travel through the adventures. Kirkus Review states: "Bergsgaard opens his book with a clear objective: 'I wrote this collection of short stories from a ten-year-old boy's eyes with the interpretation of a sixty year old man.' Through dozens of short sketches, the author sustains a childlike perception of a beguiling but bewildering adult reality...(appealing to) readers nostalgic for a time of childhood innocence in the rural American lifestyle of the 1950s. Bergsgaard's writing is suggestive of an oral storyteller with impeccable timing and taste; his language reflects the great American vernacular at its most lean and direct. ...these are emotionally engaging episodes of childhood that evoke the odyssey of a 20th-century Huck Finn." L.D. Bergsgaard spent his boyhood years in Mandan, North Dakota, a town steeped in the history of General George Custer and which declares itself as Where the West Begins. L.D. and the neighborhood gang, before that was a dangerous noun, spent unfettered days of play and exploration, not only of their small world but of each other.
