Book excerpt: Growing up in the tiny rural town of Forty-Five, South Carolina, Mendal Dawes wants nothing more than to escape his backwater hometown and his crazy father, who buries stuff in their backyard, calls Mendal "Fuzznuts," makes him recite Marx and Durkheim, and forces him to take terrible unpaid jobs--from helping out in nursing homes to tutoring. By the author of These People Are Us.