Home after dark : a novel
(Graphic Novel)

Chiefly illustrations.

Thirteen-year-old Russell Pruitt, abandoned by his mother, follows his father to dilapidated 1950s Marshfield, California where he is forced to fend for himself against a ring of malicious bullies.

When his mother runs off with local football star Ollie "Action" Jackson, thirteen-year-old Russell Pruitt has no one left but Mike, his restless father. Reeling from the divorce but eager to reunite with his sister and land a great job, Mike packs up their Youngstown, Ohio, home and heads west with Russell to the sun-splashed land of southern California. Told almost entirely through wildly kaleidoscopic images and "employ[ing] angled shots and silent montages worthy of Alfred Hitchcock" (Washington Post, on Stitches), Home After Dark follows Russell's journey through the hardscrabble world of small-town America. As the images and dream sequences hypnotically unfold, we witness a Kafkaesque coming-of-age story, whose themes - bullying, scapegoating, sexual curiosity - are all too familiar for anyone different arriving at a new school. Eager to fit in and avoid getting beaten up, the impressionable Russell succumbs to the sway and swagger of a ring of boys more feral than himself. Abandoned without even a family to turn to in this desolate, tract-home town, Russell gets initiated to manhood through his exploits at a secret treehouse and his visits to Foster's, a neon-lit diner. In addition to the hot-tempered Kurt and the good-natured Willie, his treehouse buddies, Russell encounters a cast of motley characters who populate this dusty suburb. There is the sexy waitress who serves barbs as readily as burgers; the Mahs-Wen and Jian - a childless Chinese couple, who despite the bigotry of their neighbors, have managed to create a thriving restaurant and young, confused Warren, who carries a pet rat inside his shirt and lives with his scowling but generous grandmother. -- Dust jacket.