The Field Paperback / softback

This might be the best story about childhood that I've ever read (or heard). It's a masterpiece. Chester Brown

Dave Lapp's new memoir unpacks a long, hazy 1970s summer and reveals that when we look beyond nostalgia, childhood is complicatedand rarely innocent.

Daves on the verge of summer vacation and change is on the horizon. Developers have begun digging up a field on the edges of Dave's universally familiar small town, presenting endless nooks and crannies for Dave and his fearless friend Edward to explore.

Over the course of the summer, while the town's adults remain focused on their fractured marriages and neighbourly resentments, the children are allowed to run wild in the field, collecting caterpillars and tadpoles, catching field mice (which they smuggle home), and nursing a curious fascination with Daves mothers matches and their potential for disaster.

As the summer meanders on, Edward brings a new friend into the circle. But Johns got a mean streak thats strong enough to flip Daves worldand his place in itupside down.

In The Field, Ignatz-nominated creator Dave Lapp examines a time when kids stayed out until the streetlights came on--and exposes the dangers, foibles, and wildness of childhood in the 1970s.