Title: Pig Boy's wicked bird
Subtitle: a memoir
Description: This gritty tragicomic memoir is set in one memorable year—1976, the Bicentennial, when Jimmy Carter ran for president and seven-year-old Doug Crandell lost two fingers in a farming accident. More than anything, Doug wants to shed his nickname, Pig Boy, and grow up to be a hog man like his father. His older brother Derrick reads pulp novels to him each night as he soaks his remaining fingers in Epsom salts. His brothers urge him to “flip the Wicked Bird” any time another child makes fun of his “lobster-red hand.” Doug shares his summer of healing in Wabash, Indiana, with humans and animals who’ve suffered life-changing traumas: a brutal grandfather gentled by stroke, a deaf dog with a deadly taste for pig’s ears, a tough-love mother coping with depression, a bevy of runt piglets saved from extermination. This is a story of love, loss, healing, and a family’s relation with the land they love and know that they will lose.
Subjects: Biography, Social life and customs, Intellectual life, Fingers, American Authors, Homes and haunts, Rural families, Accident victims, Farm life, Childhood and youth, Wounds and injuries, Biography & Autobiography, Nonfiction, Farm life, united states, Hand, wounds and injuries, Indiana, social life and customs, Authors, american, Authors, biography
Places: Indiana, Wabash Region, Wabash Region (Ind.)
People: Doug Crandell
Time periods: 21st century