Inflating a Dog: The Story of Ellas Lunch Launch
by Eric Kraft
Category: Fiction

Peter Leroy struggles to win the affections of the toothsome Patti Fiorenza while keeping his mother’s hopes and his mother’s boat afloat. • Ella Leroy dreams of escaping the dreary routine of her 1950s wife-and-mom life. Without telling her husband, she enlists her son Peter and his locally-notorious girlfriend Patti in a scheme to buy a run-down clamboat and re-invent it as an elegant cruising vessel for summer people in the bayside town of Babbington, Long Island. But after they’ve bought the boat, Peter discovers that it is slowly sinking. • “Inflating a Dog . . . is a novel about physical and spiritual buoyancy. It’s about keeping boats afloat and hopes aloft, and how, in one summer of Peter’s adolescence, he manages to do both. . . .” — Jennifer Reese, The New York Times Book Review • “Raucous, wise, and great fun, this is simply not to be missed.” — Nancy Pearl, Booklist • LENGTH: novel; about 89,000 words