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The Side-Yard Superhero


Rick and wife, Sheree, during a book signing at Gretchen's Fine Gifts in downtown Clarksville.

Book One in the Trilogy
Life In DeGraff: An Automythography
Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: Synergy Books (March 1, 2009)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 098154620X
ISBN-13: 978-0981546209

Automythography
A work of nonfiction that looks reflectively at what we think we remember and how we think we remember it; an iridescent memory based upon truth and fact.
R.D.N.


The Side-Yard Superhero is a remembrance in the style of Jean Shepherd, Garrison Keillor, and Tim Russert, taking the reader back to small town life in the 1950's and '60's. Stories of humor, nostalgia, and drama are told in a strong narrative voice and combined to make this "automythography" of nonfiction a vivid and compelling read. Baby boomers, adolescents, former and current small town inhabitants, and all others who seek to return to an age of innocent, simpler times will enjoy reading about Rickie's adventures and DeGraff's characters.

A first cousin to Tuesdays with Morrie, The Side-Yard Superhero drifts back softly in time to mythically real DeGraff, Ohio, to preserve a unique friendship. Bernie is a daydreaming fantasizer and want-to-be wanderlust adventurer whose fanciful plans are usually impractical strokes of unimaginable invention. In time, Bernie's vicarious adventures through his friend, Rickie, grow into real adventures with Rickie. The book's emotional payoff builds from the first chapter and culminates when the adult Rick returns to Ohio to visit Bernie in a nursing home, the two of them having not seen one another for over forty years.

Heartwarming, tender, humorous, and bittersweet, The Side-Yard Superhero retrieves carefully pocketed childhood memories and links those memories to the present. The book is one that grandparents can give to their grandchildren and grandchildren can give to their grandparents, with neither being embarrassed by the content. They will share in the joy of friendships remembered.