{"product_id":"9781565129115","title":"Why Dogs Chase Cars: Tales of a Beleaguered Boyhood","description":"These fourteen funny stories tell the tale of a beleaguered boyhood down home where the dogs still run loose. As a boy growing up in the tiny backwater town of Forty-Five, South Carolina (where everybody is pretty much one beer short of a six-pack), all Mendal Dawes wants is \u003ci\u003eout\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It's not just his hometown that's hopeless. Mendal's father is just as bad. Embarrassing his son to death nearly every day, Mr. Dawes is a parenting guide's bad example. He buries stuff in the backyard—fake toxic barrels, imitation Burma Shave signs (BIRD ON A WIRE, BIRD ON A PERCH, FLY TOWARD HEAVEN, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH), yardstick collections. He calls Mendal \"Fuzznuts\" and makes him recite Marx and Durkheim daily and befriend a classmate rumored to have head lice. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Mendal Dawes is a boy itching to get out of town, to take the high road and leave the South and his dingbat dad far behind—just like those car-chasing dogs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But bottom line, this funky, sometimes outrageous, and always very human tale is really about how Mendal discovers that neither he nor the dogs actually want to catch a ride, that the hand that has fed them has a lot more to offer. On the way to watching that light dawn, we also get to watch the Dawes's precarious relationship with a place whose \"gene pool [is] so shallow that it wouldn't take a Dr. Scholl's insert to keep one's soles dry.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To be consistently funny is a great gift. To be funny and cynical and empathetic all at the same time is George Singleton's special gift, put brilliantly into play in this new collection.","brand":"Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47137758511344,"sku":"9781565129115","price":12.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781565129115_p0.jpg?v=1769899780","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781565129115","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}