King of the Mild Frontier

ALA Best Fiction for Young Adults * New York Public Library Books for the Teen Age

A riveting, scorching—and hilarious—autobiography by the award-winning author of Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes and Deadline.

From trying to impress a member of the girls’ softball team (with disastrous dental results) to enduring the humiliation of his high school athletic club initiation (olives and oysters play unforgettable roles), Chris Crutcher’s memoir of the tricky road to adulthood is candid, disarming, laugh-out-loud funny, relevant, and never less than riveting.

He vividly describes a temper that was always waiting to trip him up even as it sustained him through some of the most memorable mishaps any child has survived. And how did this guy (he lifted his brother’s homework through the entire tenth grade) ever become a writer, not to mention the author of fourteen critically acclaimed books for young people?

The frontier may be mild, but the book is not. Fans of Tara Westover’s Educated, Jack Gantos’s Hole in My Life, and Walter Dean Myers’s Bad Boy will laugh, will cry, and will remember.

“Funny, bittersweet and brutally honest. Readers will clasp this hard-to-put-down book to their hearts even as they laugh sympathetically.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

So how does a 123-pound kid with a legendary temper survive the mild frontier?

• Boyhood Disasters: From getting his teeth knocked out by a softball bat to a disastrous bike race in the mud, Crutcher’s early attempts at glory rarely ended well.
• A Legendary Temper: A temper so explosive it could crack a full-length mirror, a trait that both humbled him and helped him survive high school as a 123-pound offensive lineman.
• Bizarre Rites of Passage: Surviving a high school C Club initiation that involved slimy oysters, black olives, and a whole lot of humiliation.
• The Accidental Writer: How does a kid who lifted his brother’s homework for an entire year become a critically acclaimed author? The story is even funnier than you think.