Firecrackers lighting up an ancient tree on a summer evening.
Twin boys born the same night their grandmother passes away. Teenagers hanging by their fingertips from the roof of a parking garage. These are the moments of quiet poetry that make up Leland Myrick's Missouri Boy.

Happiness alternates with tragedy in these snapshots of Myrick's own Missouri childhood. Filled with startling and at times achingly beautiful images -- from a perfect paper airplane flying in the autumn sky to visits to the "underwear pond" to a solitary cross-country motorcycle trip -- Myrick has created a graphic poem that brings together the experiences that formed his character, for better and for worse. These moving and intimate vignettes are at once melancholy and hopeful, exploring the surprising links between life and death, beginnings and endings. Poignant, timeless, and tenderly evoked, Missouri Boy is a unique tribute to a small-town American childhood.