Excerpt from Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

When I peered through the chain-link fence, across the expanse of half-barren concrete, at the rusting hulls of the great gray navy vessels, I was per-plexed. The place looked big enough, sure. But where was the castle? Where were Mickey and Goofy and Pluto? Where were the big animal-shaped shrubs and the frothing sea of colorful flowers and the lush expanse of green grass that had so thoroughly sparked my imagination? Also, shouldn't we be hearing the laughter of children? Shouldn't it smell like cotton candy or roasted peanuts?

Instead, there were only the frenzied cries of a dozen feeding seagulls and a waterfront redolent with the stench of dead clams and urine. The only bush in sight was a blighted thing about three feet high, an Almond Joy wrapper clinging to one of its bare limbs.

My old man clenched the chain-link fence and looked out over the ship-yard in the rain, drawing irritably from his cigarette.

"Well," he said, exhaling. "Looks like they moved. C'mon, let's get out of here."

That was Victor Muñoz for you, world's greatest dad.

Needless to say, I cried. The entire walk back to the car, I followed in my father's shadow, chin quivering, vision blurred. But I didn't let my old man see me crying. I wasn't gonna give him the pleasure. The whole drive home, I gritted my teeth and tried to make myself believe that it could still happen someday, if only to spite my father, that one day in the not-so-distant future, if I hoped hard enough, I might still gain entrance to the Happiest Place on Earth.

A kid can dream, can't he? And that's what I did, for a while, anyway, until the relentless indignities of privation wore my innocence to a nub, awakening me to the reality that dreams were for dreamers. The point is, I'm not a child anymore.

Excerpted from Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison. Copyright © 2018 by Jonathan Evison. Excerpted by permission of Algonquin Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.