What if childhood could speak for itself—clearly, honestly, and without adult interpretation? Bestselling author of The Divine Farce and The Love Song of Monkey, Michael Graziano offers a collection of short stories which showcases the evolving mind of a young writer. 
Unfiltered by nostalgia or hindsight, these stories are drawn from work created between the ages of ten and twenty-five and explore a wide and often unsettling range of themes — war, love, violence, humor, and the strange contradictions of growing up. 
The pieces trace a jagged path of creative and psychological development. Graziano with his usual flare, challenges the comforting myths about innocence, progress, and what it means to mature. This collection reconsiders childhood not as a simpler time, but as a complex state of being that is mostly lost to adults.