In God We Trust disproves the adage "You can't go home again" as Shepherd bends the ear of his hometown-buddy-turned-bartender, Flick, with tales of his quest for a Red Ryder BB gun, a terrifying encounter with a school bully, the unlikely Indiana roots of Pop Art, and a struggle to land a fish to rival The Old Man and the Sea.

Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories is a universal (and achingly funny) orchestration of Midwestern puberty rites, from the gut-wrenching playground antics of one Delbert Bumpus, to the supernal glow surrounding unapproachable high school beauty Daphne Bigelow, to the memorable disaster that was Shepherd's (and everyone else's) junior prom.

A comic genius who bridges the gap between James Thurber and David Sedaris, Shepherd may have accomplished for Holden, Indiana, what Mark Twain did for Hannibal, Missouri.