Snakes, Butterbeans & Electricity - hardcover

With the frankness of a memoir, each story in Snakes, Butterbeans, and the Discovery of Electricity explores the reaches of innocence amid a Kentucky childhood. Simply, plainly, directly, the narratives construct Four-eyes's young world as he navigates a deeply Southern, deeply real existence as a boy in the 1940s. In "The Homecoming, " Four-eyes's uncle has returned from World War II a quiet and shaken man, a casualty unlike any the young boy expected. Foureyes and Billy discover that the distance between imagination and reality can be disappointing in the story "Gangbusters." In "Fireworks, " the allure of pranks fades as the boys learn the costs of cruelty. On a dare, Four-eyes enters the house of the mysterious midgets at the end of the alley behind his house and finds much more than he bargains in "Four-eyes and the Midgets." Nolstalgic, funny, and touching, this collection reminds us of the forgotten paths and pitfalls of childhood. In the fashion of the truest Southern story-tellers, Perkins, in Snakes, Butterbeans, and the Discovery of Electricity asks us in, invites us to stay awhile, and to listen.