It’s not even
midnight yet and sixteen-year-old Artie Crenshaw, working
the night shift at Gresham Berry Growers cannery, has been
let go early—a slow, summer night, raspberry season
running out, blackberries not yet started. And Artie
has the family car with nothing to do until morning chores
on the farm. Nothing to do, that is, except get in trouble
and have fun. Nothing to do except
clash with some greasers
outside the bowling alley in town
meet Reta Jane, a high school
dropout and unwed mother, and help her uncle slaughter
a pig dying of a heart attack
get shot at in a cherry tree
and help fix a Ferris Wheel at the county fair
stumble across Wendy, poet and editor of the school paper, and get stuck
in a ticket booth with two hoods trying to make him kiss pictures in
a magazine
fight Eddy Peterson, his basketball rival, at Hosner’s Hole, the
local lovers’ lane
have a run-in with an angry woman in a tent, and encounter Colleen, a
new girl in town, on the banks of the Sandy River.
With the ominous specter of his dad’s pickup flashing
by, Artie charges through disaster after disaster, a night-long
series of adventures and encounters that leads him, after
a final confrontation with his father, to the top of a Ferris
Wheel and—just maybe—to the girl of his dreams.
