Publisher's Synopsis
In search of fame and fortune, Mahdakis, an offbeat sixteen-year-old poet/musician, runs away from his home in the dismal rural settings of The Mountains, and catapults himself towards the bright lights and Promised Land of Philadelphia. But a funny thing or two happen on the way to The City of Brotherly Love; not the least of which being a five-year detour into Norford, a large culturally and financially diverse suburbanite city in northern Delaware. It is here, in a purgatory of his own creation, he must learn to successfully walk the fine line of sanity and madness, lest he become nothing more than another tragic teenage statistic; a feat only compounded by incessant wrestling with the demons of his murderous past. As the assortment of characters he encounters become increasingly more bizarre, Mahdakis accepts the possibility that these B.U.R.N.O.U.T.S. he relents to calling friends, may represent nothing more than pinball bumpers, deterring or directing his one shot at ultimate glory and musical success. What he doesn't count on is the ferocious passion, stuffed inside each and every one of these people, like a jack-in-the-box waiting to be sprung free, and how that passion would forever scar and bless him, simultaneously. It is while running through the maze of these friendships, towards tomorrow's dream, and from yesterday's sorrow, that Mahdakis discovers who he really is, who he really was, and how there is no escaping either.
