{"product_id":"why-dogs-chase-cars","title":"Why Dogs Chase Cars","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e These fourteen funny stories tell the tale of a beleaguered boyhood down home where the dogs still run loose. As a boy growing up in the tiny backwater town of Forty-Five, South Carolina (where everybody is pretty much one beer short of a six-pack), all Mendal Dawes wants is \u003ci\u003eout\u003c\/i\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It's not just his hometown that's hopeless. Mendal's father is just as bad. Embarrassing his son to death nearly every day, Mr. Dawes is a parenting guide's bad example. He buries stuff in the backyard—fake toxic barrels, imitation Burma Shave signs (BIRD ON A WIRE, BIRD ON A PERCH, FLY TOWARD HEAVEN, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH), yardstick collections. He calls Mendal \"Fuzznuts\" and makes him recite Marx and Durkheim daily and befriend a classmate rumored to have head lice. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Mendal Dawes is a boy itching to get out of town, to take the high road and leave the South and his dingbat dad far behind—just like those car-chasing dogs.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But bottom line, this funky, sometimes outrageous, and always very human tale is really about how Mendal discovers that neither he nor the dogs actually want to catch a ride, that the hand that has fed them has a lot more to offer. On the way to watching that light dawn, we also get to watch the Dawes's precarious relationship with a place whose \"gene pool [is] so shallow that it wouldn't take a Dr. Scholl's insert to keep one's soles dry.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To be consistently funny is a great gift. To be funny and cynical and empathetic all at the same time is George Singleton's special gift, put brilliantly into play in this new collection.\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Workman Publishing","offers":[{"title":"9781565129115","offer_id":21413264263,"sku":"9781565129115","price":9.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false},{"title":"9781565124042","offer_id":21413264199,"sku":"9781565124042","price":12.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1210\/1100\/products\/9781565129115-optimized.jpg?v=1698219534","url":"https:\/\/workman-feed-prod.myshopify.com\/products\/why-dogs-chase-cars","provider":"zzz_Workman Publishing","version":"1.0","type":"link"}