When he was a young boy, Finn Easton and his mother were walking below a bridge when a dead horse, poorly strapped to a flatbed truck and destined for the glue factory, fell off and crushed both of them, killing her and severely injuring Finn. Finn has no recollections of the time before the accident, and he feels no physical sequels except for the epilepsy attacks he frequently suffers from. When he’s about to pass out, Finn first begins experiencing different smells, then he loses control of his body before forgetting even words and thoughts. When he invariably comes back to, he’s usually hurt (an unprotected fall will do that), has been gone for hours, and is in an angry mood. Finn does not measure time, but rather distance, with the Earth traveling about 20 miles in space every second, the fall of the horse lasted 5 seconds, or 100 sideway miles.
Now a junior in high school and living in the San Francisquito Canyon, below the site of the collapse of St. Francis Dam, California’s biggest engineering disaster, Finn spends most of his time with his best friend, Cade Hernandez. Born to Argentinian immigrants, Cade and Finn look very similar, but Cade is everything Finn is not: popular with girls, charismatic, a leader of his class, the captain of the baseball team, an inveterate tobacco chewer and beer drinker. Cade keeps an eye on Finn for his crises, even though Finn’s dad hates him. Finn’s father, Mike Easton, is a writer and he wrote a famous book about aliens looking like angels coming to Earth through small doors and killing and eating humans. One of the main characters was inspired by Finn.
With the school year only weeks away, Finn is asked to introduce new junior student Julia Bishop to the school. No one moves school this close to the end of the year, and Finn is immediately smitten with Julia. She seems interested as well, but finds him laying unconscious in a pool of his own urine by the open door of his house one evening, wearing only boxers. That’s when she notices the mark on his back, the same mark left when angels’ wings are cut in his father’s book. Julia instantly make the connection. Finn has never wanted to be a character in a book, and has sought to escape his fate. With Julia in town, however, and with Cade as his wing man, Finn attempts to rewrite his ending so that he can finally become his own man.
A raunchy and hilarious tale which combines actual history with a coming-of-age story, readers who enjoy Finn’s trials and tribulations should take a look at Grasshopper Jungle by the same author.
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