A fearless, genre-defying hybrid memoir that refracts fear, personal identity, and the fading Jim Crow South through a prism of Greek myth, mid-century pop culture, and visual art.

In August of 1963, 11-year-old white David boards a segregated bus on his first solo journey and forms an immediate bond with a precocious Black boy named Theseus. What begins as a youthful effort to understand fear fractures into dimensions defined by the absurd. Soon enough, their route collides with philandering, masquerading deities, the stubborn confusion of growing up, and a Purgatory processing station perched atop a giant prune in near-Earth orbit.

The boys run for the office of U.S. President, become a warm-up act at a Las Vegas-style nightclub before Las Vegas is a style, and reckon with a hidden truth: David’s mother’s wartime affair with author James Agee.

Designed as both a literary narrative and a collectible artist’s book, this refined second edition features 27 chapters interwoven with full-color visual art, typographic expression, and experimental poetry. Recognized in juried museum art exhibitions as a physical art object and developed as the foundation for a 2026 Relentless Award–honored stage adaptation, "A Tornado, a Turnip, and a Minotaur Walk into a Bar," documents a search for friendship, family history, and truth.