It\'s summer, 1965, school\'s out and Butch\'s birthday is in a few weeks.
A dark version of "The Wonder Years," Frank Vaughn Killed by his Mom is "The Great Santini" written by Homer, careening through a coarse world of racism, adultery, abandonment, and even the occasional hope..
If he\'s alive at the end of the summer, it\'ll be a bigger one.
If Butch ever sees his beloved sister, Cindy, again, it\'ll be a miracle. and Frank Vaughn.
Like a crewman on Ulysses\' ship, Butch encounters a one-eyed evil grandfather, a 12-year-old Siren, the lotus-eaters of Alabama...
But in one night, Butch\'s summer explodes and he\'s now riding across a turbulent and changing Dixie in a white Rambler station wagon, at the mercy of a manic depressive and wildly violent Dad.
Dad is touchier than ever and Mom sadder, so best to hide out next door with his best friend Tommy reading X-Men and hoping for that birthday GI Joe.
Well, maybe not completely perfect - Frank Vaughn, a classmate, is beaten to death by his crazy mother for leaving a report card at school.
Perfect; three months of freeze tag, hide and seek and riding his bike way past dark.
It\'s summer, 1965, school\'s out and Butch\'s birthday is in a few weeks
