Looking for a ridiculous and absurd literary fiction read with a timely message? Join us for a signing for John Young’s Getting Huge.
This often-comic novel is for all who have worked with the wrong people in the wrong place, and ached to escape—to start something new and find a sense of belonging.
What begins as backyard diversion swells into a hilarious and absurd obsession: to grow the world’s largest pumpkin and, with the help of an entrepreneur friend, build a pumpkin empire to make everything from snacks to toilet paper. All to win him fame and fortune (and perhaps the affection of an alluring neighbor). Reverend John Crackstone sees his pumpkins, especially the giant named Schwartz, as his shot at greatness. And it becomes his chance to flip the tables on his affluent and perpetually disappointed deacons.
While often comic, Getting Huge resonates with the Great Resignation and quiet quitting, as it shows how the pursuit of other people’s goals and ideas of success can cloud judgment. Until we are jolted into clarity and head for the hills.
Follow John Crackstone's humorous eight-month adventure from Easter morning to Christmas Eve in a stumbling pursuit of success and sense of belonging.
Born and raised beyond the suburbs in Indianapolis, John Young graduated from Indiana University and earned an MFA in creative writing from Emerson College, Boston. He is the author of three books, the novels: Getting Huge and When the Coin is in the Air as well as Fire in the Field and Other Stories.Young also taught English at the high school and college levels and spent many years in advertising as a copywriter and creative director mostly in Boston. He and his teams won more than 250 awards for creative excellence.He spent 20 years in Beverly, Mass. and now lives with his wife and two kids in Cincinnati, Ohio.
