Singing With the Top Down
Precocious 13-year-old Pauly Mahoney heads an ensemble cast of eccentric characters in this coming-of-age charmer. Pauly and her eight-year-old polio-survivor brother, Buddy, lose their parents after a roller-coaster accident at the Fabulous Fortuno Brothers Traveling Carnival in Tulsa, Okla., one hot July 1955 night. The only family member willing to take the pair in is perky Aunt Nora, a wannabe Hollywood actress who shows up with a fat wad of cash, a "cream-puff 1953 Buick Skylark convertible" and the promise of a new life in California. During the road trip to the Golden State, they pick up nursing-home runaway Tybolt Bisbee and Puppy, his smelly dog. The entourage ebbs and flows with the appearance of a misplaced Indian woman and her small son, the 500-year-old mummified remains of a child, and Joe, an ex-navy fighter pilot on his way to L.A. and a new job flying for TWA. Graceful and witty, Pauly's courageous voice is this bighearted novel's greatest strength.(Sept.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.