Penny Taylor Decker

The Crackerjack Kid Penny Taylor Decker 1st edition

The Vietnam War did not just end for a vet after his or her tour... The Crackerjack Kid is a powerful story about the troubled Skip Archer and twins Buddy and Cissy Meyers. Life in Midwest's Paytonville for these best friends and their pals reveals its cryptic youthful secrets through their childhood innocence, to their ambitious teenage hopes and dreams...during the Vietnam War Era. After serving nearly two tours, a hip wound took Skip Archer out of country. He returned home to another kind of war: An unexpected cataclysmic aftermath of dragons and demons from hell masked as anger, rage, solitude, abuse, nightmares and flashbacks. He bitterly ignored the pleas from his childhood sweetheart, Cissy, and family and friends to put the war behind him and just get on with his life. He couldn't. Helplessly they watched him descend deeper into his 'war of hell': The volatile reaction to Cissy's playfulness which almost ended her life; his ongoing hostile high school feud with Gary; the mysterious agitation at his best friend, Buddy-Cissy's twin brother-the rookie cop; and...his bewildering battles that ultimately drove him to the chilling uncompromising conclusion. Grow up with these Midwestern kids with their high standards and old fashioned morals and principles; discover the hopes and dreams of youthful--often painful---innocence; then follow them from Haight-Ashbury to Army hospitals, to Skip's disheartening homecoming, and through his all-too-real nightmares and flashbacks that unleashed his savage war of Vietnam demons.