Scary, man

As a professional storyteller and teacher, Griffin Donnelley has a mesmerizing way with words. In fact, it has enabled him to cut quite a swath through the small towns in California where he teaches in schools and performs in bookstores and town halls. Nonetheless, he just can't seem to catch a break, and is chugging along in his Camry from gig to gig, heading straight for utter burnout. Is there still time to reroute his faltering existence, or is his future looking decidedly scary? Droll and dead-on in its sizing up of contemporary culture, Scary, Man is author Jeffrey Hickey's wry and singular story of one man, his wife, and their daughter. Together, they embrace a new normal at the turn of the twenty-first century in America, while trying their hardest in the land of the free, and the home of the afraid. An absorbing work of literary fiction peppered with gay themes and social commentary, this humor-inflected take on small towns, small minds, rumor mills, and rampant paranoia will strike an all-too-familiar chord with readers trying to make their way through the shaky American landscape, while keeping marriage and morals intact, and mayhem at bay.