Dairy Queen Days: A Novel

In the summer of 1979, 16-year-old Trout Mosley finds his life turned upside down. His mother has been hospitalized in Atlanta for depression; his preacher father has been scandalizing his parishioners with strange comparisons of Jesus and Elvis Presley, and Trout himself has been packed off to the small Georgia town that bears his family's name. Here, he becomes reacquainted with a number of eccentric relatives, gets involved with a strong-minded girl named Keats Dubarry, and lands a job at the local Dairy Queen.

But Trout's summer is hardly idyllic. Keats's father is involved in trying to unionize local mill workers, and his efforts will pit the Dubarrys against the Mosleys in a final confrontation that will change everything. Alternately sweet and sad, Dairy Queen Days is, as Trout's father says of a spoonful of ice cream, "good for the soul."