Publisher's Synopsis
Readers will never forget William E. Dunstan's uplifting series Adventures of a Southern Boyhood, an unflinching and spectacular memoir permeated by resilience, friendship, and devotion. This fourth book, Spinning Mischief Galore, extends the colorful story, beginning as William enters the fifth grade and continuing through his unconventional and unsupervised summer vacation after the seventh grade. During this period he still envisions becoming an inventor on the scale of Thomas A. Edison, but sometimes his inventions and experiments go horribly awry. Meanwhile William and his captivating friends sidestep bizarre ghosts, learn secrets, relish tales of terror and the supernatural, and overhear forbidden stories. Singing lyrical tales to human existence, they write letters in invisible ink, stumble into fistfights, develop spying techniques, and dabble in hypnosis. Their passionate bonds strengthen as they see three British Queens in black veils, play spin the bottle, attend their first dance, devour reports of flying saucers, tour Washington without adult supervision, and participate in a spicy hayride. Soon after the hayride, a bolt of lightning leaps through an open window and grazes young William's head. Perhaps ill-omened, the jolt kindles inklings of personal doom as William faces the riveting pitfalls of the eighth grade.
