East Texas in the 1960s is not the worst place to have grown up, but for narrator Jake of The Jugheads, it was a minefield. Describing first jobs and first kisses, family vacations and family fights with unusual clarity and courage, Jake takes us through a wild ride of a coming of age tale, in an Ordinary American Family that is as violent and dysfunctional as they come. Despite his upwardly-mobile, working-class father Richard's draconian rule over the household, Jake manages to grow into his gifts as an artist and an athlete.